Gunnery Sergeant Jacklyn Singer
by Irish Ghost
Summary: Bobby's daughter is home from the war. Still a hunter to the core, she now works under Gibbs as the medic of his team. She also has the part-time job of keeping Dean and Sam patched up. But when Dean goes to hell...
1. Chapter 1

**I OWN NONE OF MY CHARACTERS BUT GUNNERY SERGEANT JACKLYN SINGER! SUPERNATURAL BELONGS TO ERIC KRIPKE! NCIS BELONGS TO BELLARIUS INC.!**

* * *

Staring out into the interior of the C-17 Globemaster that she was a passenger of, a young woman gazed out into space, imagining that she saw the Atlantic Ocean as it merged with the northeastern coastline of the United States of America off in the distance. She grimaced as she leaned back in her canvas netting seat. Her desert MARPAT uniform was stifling in the heat of the plane's interior, crowded as it was with anxious Marines on the verge of returning home, but it was not as bad as the full-leg bandage job to her right leg straightened out in front of her or the tensor bandages wrapped around her from bra line to waist. The pain of the movement as she shifted slightly in her seat made her wince, but she resisted leaning over and taking out the painkillers stashed in one of the pockets of the duffel secured beneath her feet. Just two more hours, and she would be home...

"It's almost time, isn't it, Doc?" Sergeant Matthew Rondo of the United States Marine Corps was unusually jittery in the seat next to her; if he wasn't excited about going home, then she was a monkey's uncle. His eyes were smiling as he imagined his wife and family coming to greet him at the terminal, their happy faces at seeing him alive after the last year. However, those dark brown eyes darkened even more as he shot a gaze over to his comrade-in-arms. "Gunny? Are you okay, ma'am?"

She tried to chuckle, but the pain in her ribs was pretty bad and it turned into a grimace. "Yeah, Sergeant. I'm fine." She took as deep a breath as her injured body would allow. "Just need some R&R without the turbulence, and I'll be good to fight another day, Timberwolf." She was hinting at the unit they both served with: 1st Battalion 2nd Marines, one of six infantry units deployed out of Camp LeJeune in North Carolina. While he was an infantry man, she was the platoon's Corpsman; she was in charge of the whole of Alpha Company's health in the field, rotating posts with the different platoons every week; back at their base near Baghdad she was second-in-command on the chain of medical authority right under the Naval Medical Officer, Captain Johnson.

She was one of the easier people to talk to, even if she was higher up on the totem pole. Since the first day that she arrived in Iraq, she had insisted that all of the men, officer and non-coms alike, call her 'Gunny' or 'Doc', and treating them like her brothers out in the field, albeit with a touch more respect for the officers when the situation called for it. That, of course, was not meant to belittle her assets; she was a warrior to fight with, and a human machine when it came to her job of saving lives. Every week, she would follow different platoons into the fire zone and fight alongside them. She was a wicked shot, as evident by the Expert Marksmanship Badge on her service uniform; rumor had it that during training, she was nearly selected to specialize as a sniper, but she had turned it down in order to her hybridized role as a Marine Corpsman. Besides, Rondo had worked beside her at Parris Island, and he had seen how she worked harder than anyone else to earn the respect of the men that she was training with. That mindset of hard work and getting down to it, one job after the other, had set her apart from others. She had earned her stripes as a Marine.

"Hoo-rah, Gunny." Rondo nodded his head once before closing his eyes for a moment. As they turned silent, more of the men from her platoon turned to look at them and struck up a conversation. Most of them were excited to get back home to of their wives, their families, and the promised bliss of normalcy. Now that their tour was completed, they were no longer active Marines; at least, they were until the chance of if and when they got called up again to serve.

"So Doc, what are you going to do first when we hit land?" Corporal Smith gave a dazzling smile as he thought of his wife and two little children waiting for him when he got back. But as he turned back to her, he could have sworn that he saw tears glisten in her eyes before she blinked them away.

"The first thing that I'm going to do is kiss my father and then never leave him again."

* * *

Dean and Sam Winchester drove down I-78 in Dean's prized '67 Impala as they crossed the city limits into New York City; Bobby Singer was sitting in the back seat, looking up through the open window at the skyline as it appeared around and in front of them. The sounds of Kansas filled the car as Dean listened to 'Carry On, My Wayward Son,' to alleviate the silence from the unexpected side trip.

"So Bobby, wanna tell us what's this about?" Sam turned over to look at their mentor and the closest living thing to a dad they had since John died two years ago. They had picked him up in Pittsburgh on their way from Erie, Pennsylvania, and were driving now down to John F. Kennedy International Airport of all places. Underneath his trademark trucker's cap, his eyes gleamed with excitement. In his hands was a bunch of opened letters that he had been reading through since they had left his motel in Pittsburgh.

"I told you, idjit. I want you guys to meet someone." Dean looked at his rear-view mirror in order to stare at the veteran hunter for a few moments before gazing back out at the busy road.

"All right, Bobby. But JFK, man? That's one of the busiest airports in the country. What, is this mystery person coming in from overseas?"

"No, Dean: coming _home _from overseas." As they pulled into the nearest parking space to the entrance, Bobby moved with the speed of his long-lost youth as he ran towards Terminal Six, Gate Twelve. The Winchester brothers gave one another a look of bemused confusion before following close behind him into the chaos.

* * *

The C-17 came to a squealing halt, bumping its way along the landing strip until it came to a complete stop. The young gunnery sergeant locked her teeth and knees and grimaced until the last of the vibrations had finished reverberating through her injured body. As the belly of the plane opened to reveal two transports that would take them to the gates of the terminal itself, she slowly got to her feet and reached for the crutches at the side of where she had been sitting. Trying to bend even further to reach her duffel, she tried to not make a stern face as Sgt. Rondo beat her to it.

"No disrespect, Doc, but there's no way that I'm going to let you carry this with your crutches," he chuckled as he hefted both of their duffels on his back and walked beside her as she hobbled off the plane step by gingery step. He could see the pain written on her blanched tan face but he admired her dogged determination not to let the pain ride her. Not for nothing had the men nicknamed her 'Gunnery Sergeant Wolf' and made her the unofficial mascot of the battalion. Once in the unit, they had a contest among them to see how many scars everyone of them had, tattoos not included. The gunny had beaten them all when she took off her shirt and showed off the scars on her arms and torso. She never did explain what had caused them, even after incessant questioning from the new guys in the company.

"Rondo," she spoke up as she stepped onto the nearest transport and leaned against the side window to relieve the weight from her right side. "I have to tell you, I love working with you guys but I have missed this place more." She glanced around at the airport as she smiled, taking in the sweet sight of home.

This gave the corporal pause as he stood next to her. "Gunny, can I ask you something?"

She looked over to him and stared at him in the eyes. "Yeah, Sergeant. Anything."

He cleared his throat before speaking. "How many years did you do?" She sighed as she took off her utility cover and tucked it under her jacket and looked ahead of her for a moment.

"I served in the Corps for six consecutive tours, Rondo." That answer shocked him. "I stayed with Alpha Company for the first tour as per my primary orders, but my secondary orders were to remain in Baghdad and Fallujah to assist Capt. Johnson with the other three companies of our unit." She looked away for a moment. "Six years overseas; six years of service to my country. But nothing will compare to seeing my dad's face again." She chuckled when she finally looked over to him and took in the look of open shock on the Marine's face. "Don't worry. I volunteered for the four other tours, Corporal."

"No disrespect meant, Doc, but you are one crazy Marine."

"Isn't that why you and your men call me 'Gunnery Sergeant Wolf', Marine?" That earned a couple of deep-throated laughs as the transport came to a stop. As the troops made to get off, Sgt. Rondo made them stop in order to let her off first. Resisting the feminine impulse to blush at the chivalry, she saw Sgt. Wickshire take her duffel and Corporal Smith hand her crutches over to her. The two of them, along with Cpl. Rondo, escorted her to the door of the terminal. As they waited for the door to open, she stripped Wickshire of her belongings and insisted that they go first, letting the canvas bag on her shoulders and getting used to the weight.

As the door opened, the roar of applause rang through the air as the families of the soldiers came forward to hug their loved ones. The young gunnery sergeant saw her father near the back of the crowd and began to limp over to him as fast as she could.

Bobby saw her walking slowly towards him and he ran into the crowd to meet her halfway; a gasp came out of his mouth as he took her in. The first thing that he noticed was how she had filled into her height last time he had seen her: easily, she had gained twenty pounds of muscle to fill out her six-foot-four frame, but she was still lean. Stopping before her, he took in the bulk underneath her right pant leg, the crutches that bore her weight, and the strained look on her familiar face. She hadn't been sleeping well, by the look of her gaunter-than-normal face and the shadows under the hazel eyes that were her mother's. Out of the confines of her cover, she ran one of her piano hands over the signature jarhead haircut that was the remnants of her mid-back golden brown hair.

"Hey, old man." Bobby gave her a look that made her laugh before giving him a gentle hug. A few tears threatened to come down her face as he wrapped his arms around her torso and squeezed; he never saw the blood drain from her tanned face or the fierce grimace at the pressure on her injuries. She let no groan or gasp out; she could deal with the pain, transient as it was, if it gave her father some peace of mind after all of her being gone for almost a decade overseas.

Bobby let go of her, grinning up at her with tearful pride written all over his face. "Come on; I got some old friends I want you to meet again." Walking slowly to accommodate her crutches, she knew better than to argue with him when he took her duffel and made a point of carrying it without any assistance from her. It held a lot of gear and it was heavier than it looked, but he managed it. She chuckled a few times; stoicism and stubbornness ran in her family, but it was made her suited for the Marine Corps so well.

He walked over to the Winchester boys and stood straight as an arrow, waiting for when she managed to navigate herself to where they were waiting. "Dean and Sam Winchester, you may not remember her, but this is Gunnery Sergeant Jacklyn Singer, my daughter."


	2. Chapter 2

Sam and Dean's jaws dropped before Dean asked, "I'm sorry... did you say 'daughter'?"

When Bobby tried to explain, Jacklyn just placed her hand on his shoulder to make him stop while he was ahead. "I'll try to explain everything in the car." Turning back to the soldiers around her as they greeted their families, she raised her voice over the din of the crowd and cried out, "Devil dogs!" All of the men from her company went silent as she doffed her crutches onto the nearby chair and stood on her own. Pumping her good arm and fisted hand in the air, she began the call of "OO-RAH! OO-RAH! OO-RAH!" The rest of the Marines joined in and soon the entire terminal resonated with the cry of the returning Marines. In the midst of their impromptu celebration, none of them noticed that their gunnery sergeant and company mascot picked up her crutches where they had fallen against a chair and walked with her father and his friends out to the parking lot.

The mid-April air was humid but brisk, and the goose bumps rose on the back of her neck at the differences in temperature from Iraq. Not allowing herself to show any more discomfort on her face than she already had, Jacklyn braved it without a word until she made it to the Impala. Bobby placed her bag in the trunk as she ran an admiring hand over the chassis. "'67 Chevy Impala? This yours?" She looked over to the brothers and got a nod. "She's a beaut."

"How's about we talk cars when we get back to yer house?" Jacklyn just laughed as she opened the side door and hobbled into the car as best as she could with her bummed leg, sighing as she felt the buttery leather underneath her neck when she tilted her head back. When Dean slipped into the driver's seat, she relayed the instructions to get down to Quantico Marine Corps Base. The ride to the base, located on the Virginia coast, was a little over four hours long and pretty quiet. Dean drove as fast as he could, speed limits be damned. He saw the look on the tired gunny's face and knew it well; no matter how hard she tried to hide it, she was in some serious pain. Speaking of, he remembered that tired gunny from when he used to visit Bobby with Dad and Sammy before the whole schism in their family tore them apart, leaving him and Dad alone and Sam going off to Stanford.

Sam was still thinking of the ramifications of Bobby having a daughter. He barely remembered his earlier years travelling with his family, and his dad never let him meet other hunters than Bobby himself. The foremost question on his mind was: was she a hunter? God, she had to be at least a few years older than Dean, and combat-experienced? She just got back from Iraq! He wondered what it would be like to face her at peak condition, but a small part of him was nervous as to the cause of her injuries.

"So, Bobby, wanna tell us what's going on?" Dean kept his eyes on the road. Jacklyn smiled and looked out of one eye at her dad. She nodded her head once, giving her permission to continue his earlier story.

"Dean, I _was _married, you idjit!" Bobby leaned over and slapped the back of his head. "Jacklyn was three when the demon took over my wife and I had to... put her down. After that, she and I learned everything that we could about the supernatural. She had an instinct about these things, knew where to look for the information. Hell, half my books at home are hers. We learned shooting and knife-throwing together; she speaks Latin and ancient Sumerian like they're her mother tongue, along with German, Japanese, Chinese, French, Spanish, Italian." Somehow, this had turned into a time for Bobby to advertise her skills like a prize racing horse instead of how he had a daughter.

"Dad, you forgot to mention my times alone." As she interrupted, the boys heard that her voice was deep and melodious, having that same lilt as her father. "When Dad went on hunting trips when I was younger, I would teach myself with borrowed language dictionaries and the Bible. That was after my assigned school work; managed to get an A- average when I graduated from the local high school at eighteen."

"Wait, you actually graduated?" Dean was confused. Since he was ten years old, he, Sammy, and Dad had been moving around this country. He barely had a chance to get his GED, let alone a high school diploma. Sam was lucky; he managed to get a full ride to Stanford for a few years before Dean had asked for his help in tracking down Dad, and eventually getting back into hunting.

"Unlike most hunters, Dean, Dad and I stayed in one place. Dad travelled from place to place, but he left me at home to fend for myself." There was silence in the car for a few minutes, until Jacklyn cleared her throat and asked, "What else do you want to know, boys?"

"What'd you with the Marines?" That was Sam; his voice barely hid the excitement in his voice.

"Well, after high school, I moved away from Dad and Sioux Falls and got a job as a paramedic in Chesapeake. That took three years of additional training once I got accepted to the local trades school. After that, I worked for a year until a USMC recruiter found me. He explained the need for hospital corpsmen, and that they were targeting everyone for recruitment. I was the first female he asked, and I took him up on his offer.

"I was transferred to Parris Island for basic USMC training. Thirteen weeks, and they transformed me from a woman to a Marine. Before the training even began, I went to the head drill sergeant in a moment of sheer stubbornness and asked to be treated as one of the men. After looking at me like I was crazy, he agreed on the conditions that I would not complain and that if I failed, I would not come back for a second chance. This was my only opportunity to join the Corps. That's why I have the jarhead; one: it's practical, and two: all actively assigned men in the Marine Corps are to maintain one as SOP."

They looked at her strangely when she used the acronym, so she clarified. "Sorry; SOP means standard operating protocol.

"The men were either nervous of me or infuriated with me when I passed their initial PT test and got my head shaved like them. I never questioned the motives behind their making me a pariah; I was just here to be a Marine, not to make friends. In fact, their pushing and their questioning pushed me to train ever harder. During the one hour of personal time allotted a day, I would do push-ups, sit-ups, and chin-ups until my hands bled, my muscles screamed, and beyond. After that, the men respected me that much more.

"On Graduation Day, I held the rank of Corporal, top of my class. My drill instructor, before letting us go, told us he had high hopes for all of us, but then he stopped in front of me and said that he had high hopes for me especially. After Graduation Day, I headed out for Camp LeJeune and got trained as a Hospital Corpsman with my FMTB certification. That just means that I have specialized training in emergency medicine. It took me one year instead of the standard two years because of my background as a paramedic. The new wannabe Corpsmen would look at me like I was God come down when I would do field medicine without even a pause in my thinking or changing my actions. Most of them, to tell the truth, were PAs and fresh blood right out of University.

"Within a month, I had a house here at Quantico. I made friends with some of the wives, but some of them are downright snobs. One of the wives next door and her son are looking after my place for me right now.

"I was deployed with the _USS George Washington_ for six months to train with the Corpsmen in 2000; I got to spend Christmas overseas. The Persian Gulf was hot, and the time there was boring, thankfully. Not a lot of action. The Agent Afloat was a pain in the ass, though.

"In 2001, I returned only to be reassigned. I did a year-long tour with the _USS Carl Vinson_ during Operation Southern Watch. I saw my first action there, but I was still on the ship. I wasn't on the ground with my men.

"On April 4, 2002, I shipped out with Alpha Company of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines out of LeJeune. I served in Fallujah, Baghdad, and all over Iraq. I stayed overseas instead returning home after my tours to assist Captain David Johnson as his second-in-command. But, now I'm home." She smiled slightly and let the rhythm of the Impala's tires against the road take away some of the pain.

For a while, there was silence among the four hunters. Jacklyn had her head back and her eyes closed, almost like she was sleeping. The sounds of the road and the quiet of the air were soothing, until Sam asked another question. "So what's your specialty... you know, as a hunter?"

Jacklyn lifted her head back up and stared at Sam. "God, you don't stop asking questions, do you?" She chuckled a few times, deigning not to notice the evil looks both Dean and Bobby were tossing his way. "I'm a researcher, Samuel. I'm the one to come to if you don't know something. I do everything, from werewolves to shtriga to wendigos to your all-purpose demons. A good third of the lore books in my house are for international spirits and creatures. I know the hierarchy of Hell and Heaven, and I specialize my research now in angels. Know the Books of Enoch and Revelations by heart, as well as the Jewish and Catholic Apocrypha."

"Jacklyn Marie Singer, how many time do I have to tell that that stuff's nonsense?" Bobby resisted smacking her upside the head.

"Dad, what we do is ridiculous! If I told my men what was going on with the hunters back home, I'd be dishonorably discharged on psychiatric leave for the rest of my natural life!" Her voice got deep when she was pissed, but that didn't stop Bobby from smacking her upside the head. "Jesus, Dad! What was that for?" She twisted and shook her head to make the ringing go away.

"For sarcasm, for blasphemy, and for preaching about the Apocalypse, young lady!" Bobby looked smug as she growled at him.

"Since when do you care about blasphemy?"

"When you did it, that's when!"

"Fucking double standards! Fine, then give me back all my books, _old _man!" Both of them glared at each other before chuckling. Jacklyn took a look out the window and saw the base coming up fast. They approached the gates of Quantico Marine Corps Base. A MP stopped them and asked for identification. Jacklyn showed him her DOD Uniformed Service Card after digging in her shirt pockets for a few seconds, and he snapped to attention. With that, Dean just slid through, and she relayed her address.

"So... Winchester, huh?" Jacklyn looked over at the back of the brothers' heads. "Any relation to John Winchester?"

"Yeah, he was our dad." She heard the emphasis on 'was' and the sober mood that followed. John Winchester was dead, yet another hunter gone.

"My condolences, boys. Dean, it's this house." Dean pulled into a starter house with a front garage. A light brown stucco with white molding and a cleanly cut lawn made this place seem too Stepford for the Winchesters' tastes. "God, I missed this place." Gathering up her crutches, she moved slowly out of the car and stood straight.

"Boys, get her gear." Dean was all but tripping over his feet to help her. She didn't notice the chivalrous act as her dad got the house key and opened the door for her to make her way over.

Dean looked around and was creeped out by the neatness of the room. Unlike Bobby's constant state of mess, all of Gunnery Sergeant Singer's books were neatly stacked and put away on seven massive double-sided bookcases. There was no dust; not a speck to be seen anywhere. Her furniture was a dark brown leather; the floor was a forest green carpet against a lighter green on the walls. As she hobbled into the living room, Dean saw a set of stairs leading to the second floor. But what caught his attention were the glasses besides the bottles of rum, scotch, and whiskey before the stairs. At the sight of the leather loveseat, the gunnery sergeant sighed with happiness and let herself collapse on it.

Bobby sat across from her in the recliner as Dean placed her bag by the stairs and joined Sam standing against the wall. "Jacklyn... are you going back?"

She let a few seconds go by as she propped her leg up on the low table in front of her. Massaging her leg, she answered with, "Dad, I think six years of active service is enough. Before I left Iraq, Capt. Johnson put in a good word for me and was able to get my status changed to non-active duty. I'm still a Marine, but now I can work in the States without fear of being stop-lost." She grimaced as she took off her jacket and looked at the accomplishment badges above her nameplate and on her shoulder. "These," she fingered the badges, "and the medals in my bag mean nothing to me except that I did my duty to my country as best as I could." Bobby said nothing, but tears came down anyway as he embraced his daughter once more.

Dean picked up the jacket and peered at the accomplishment badge. Their dad was a sergeant in the Marines, and he taught Dean and Sam what some of these meant. On her shoulder was the rank badge of a Gunnery Sergeant: three open chevrons, two crossed rifles, and two lines underneath, all done up in bright orange and gold thread. Beneath that was the badge for the Hospital Corpsman: a white caduceus on a black square background. Above her name badge pinned into the top of the pocket was a brass pin of the Marine insignia: the eagle, anchor, and globe. On the opposite sleeve was her company badge: 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines. This woman was most likely a better soldier than he was.

"What are you going to do now?" Sam asked from his place against her wall.

"I report to NCIS in three days for my new job under a Dr. Mallard. I'm going to be the on-site medic for the lead investigative field team." Again, there was silence for a moment.

"Now," Bobby used the back of his hand to wipe the errant moisture on his face away, "Whatcha do to yerself?"

She scoffed and began to lean forward, only to find that she couldn't reach the hem of her pants. She leaned back and ran a hand over her shorn hair. "A bomb caught me ten days ago; frickin' shrapnel from the sandstone and metal got caught in my side and leg. Despite my platoon's offer, I humped myself out of there and back to base, and I ended up in surgery for about three hours to get it all out. Nothing was serious," she added as she saw the looks on their faces, "but they gave me a Purple Heart for it, as I continued to fight as I fell back. After that, I was re-assigned to base work until I was considered fully healed." She looked over to Dean and asked, "Dean, can you help me out for a moment?"

Despite her being a girl, Dean respected her greatly as he did as she asked. He knelt in front of her and rolled up her right pant leg as far as it would go, so just above her knee. She winced and grimaced slightly as the tight layers of the bandages were peeled off. Without thinking, Sam went over to the bar and poured her a shot of Jack Daniel's; she tossed it back like a pro. When the final layer of tensor was taken off, Bobby swore blue in the face.

Gunnery Sergeant Singer's right leg was covered in nasty blue-purple bruises. All over her calf and going up under the pant leg and onto her thigh were lacerations when the shrapnel had been embedded into her before the surgeons had taken them out; in all, there were probably about forty such lacerations, all neatly sewn together with stark black thread. That wasn't all, as she took off her shirt and revealed another set of tensor bandages; these ones, she managed to take off herself without much trouble. The right side of her torso, from shoulder to hip, was covered in the same color of bruises and maybe twenty other such lacerations. Sam looked like he was about to toss his cookies when he saw two of her ribs move under her taut skin.

Seeing his reaction, Jacklyn answered nonchalantly with, "They're floating ribs, Samuel. They're not busted, just bruised." Slipping back into her shirt, she swung her leg off the glass top table. "Capt. Johnson told me to go to Bethesda tomorrow afternoon for an assessment and to get the stitches out."

Bobby handed her the crutches as she tried to stand up, but she shook her head. "I can bear some weight on it, dad. I'm not a complete invalid." Turning to face them all one more time, she pointed out her ground rules. "Guest room's down the hall, unless you'd like to sleep on the couch. Fridge is stocked, thanks to Amelia, if you're hungry; there's also beer. If you drink the last of my liquor, you're buying me more. And don't make a mess." With that, she walked, or rather limped, up the stairs and into her room.


	3. Chapter 3

Bobby watched his daughter as she slept on her left side to relieve the pressure on her injuries. She looked so young, as if the past thirty years had never happened. He saw as he sipped his morning coffee that she had a scar running through her left eye that he never saw before. How did that happen to her? A tear came to his eye; goddamn, he missed his baby girl. Sniffling back the chick-flick moment, as Dean would call it, he tried to move quietly from the doorframe to rejoin the boys downstairs; he didn't see her open her eyes as he shut the door behind him.

Groaning as quietly as she could, she levered herself off of her bed and came to sit at the edge. Walking gingerly over to the dresser, she slipped into a white Under-Armor muscle shirt and the loosest pair of cargo pants so not to aggravate her stitches. She grimaced as she over-stretched her side in getting into her clean shirt, but the pain soon faded as she breathed through it. Running a hand over her tattoo, she splashed some water on her face and slid her watch back on her wrist. Gathering up her crutches- someone had placed them by her door last night as she slept- she hobbled over to the landing.

Before making herself known, she heard a conversation down the stairs in her kitchen. Instinct and training shot to action inside of her as she proceeded to do a little reconnaissance. Something bothered her about the way that Dean was acting the day before, and she would find out, preferably without having to dig into his past with her numerous contacts in the hunter world.

"Dean, you got three weeks left. D'you find anything?" That was her dad.

"Bobby, all we've found out is that in three weeks, a Hellhound comes to find me. The only news that we did find, but I don't trust, is that this Lilith demon holds my contract. But that's Bela's intel, and I hate that slimy bitch, even though she's dead." That was Dean. Her brow furrowed; he made a crossroads deal?

"Dean, Ruby seems to know something. After that jail break in February, maybe we can ask her again..." That was Samuel, the quiet one from the night before.

"Sam, she's a demon! Why do you trust her so much?" Her eyebrows shot up. Well, well, well... the wheels continued to turn and reveal shocking things about these Winchester boys. Deciding that she had heard enough, she began to make her way down the stairs.

"Something going on that I should know about, Dad?" All three men started when they saw –not heard- her coming towards them. Bobby's eyes went right to the ink on her arm: four words in a semi-bold font spelled out 'So Others May Live' that wrapped around her right bicep. She, however, was looking towards Dean. "Hellhound on your trail, perhaps?"

Bobby reached across the table and smacked her around the head. "That's for eavesdropping." Glaring at him as she rubbed the back of her head –what was that now, two smacks in two days? - she looked back to Dean; he was looking guiltily at the tabletop.

Crutching her way over to him, she lifted up his chin and made him look at her. She saw guilt, but no regret in his eyes. He was tired, but it was more than a physical tired. This was a man, like her, who had seen far too much in their short lives. This was a man who cherished his family, his brother, more than life itself. No words needed to be said; she understood the feeling with her brother Marines. Dean Winchester had sacrificed himself, had resigned himself to the Pit, for reasons that were all his own. He would tell them to her, but in a private moment.

Letting him go, she placed her crutches against the kitchen counter and began to get the pans out. "So, who wants pancakes?" At that, the atmosphere brightened. Staring at the massive house of pancakes that the gunnery sergeant was making with no problems, Dean was like a little kid again. He was cheerful, genuinely smiling as she served up the pancakes alongside bacon and strong coffee. All of the hunters were laughing amongst themselves, as if for a moment they were normal.

"So, Jacklyn," Dean began to speak but she cut him off.

"Only my old man here and my COs still call me 'Jacklyn', Dean. Hell, most of my company calls me 'Gunny' or 'Doc'. You can call me Jack." She eyed him as she drank her coffee, smiling as the liquid came down her throat with a taste of 'welcome home'. Base coffee had nothing on a homemade brew.

"Jack." Dean rolled the name on his tongue. It fit her: simple, tough, and kind of sexy. "Show you mine if you show me yours?" She chuckled once as he stared at the ink on her arm.

"Sure, why not?" She looked at Dean, waiting for him to start. Pushing himself away from the table, he pulled his flannel shirt away to reveal a pentacle done up in a tribal-style sunburst on his pec.

"Nice, very nice." Taking a deep swig of coffee, she too moved away from the table. Unlike Dean, she turned around and stripped off her shirt and bra, covering her front with practiced motions. All three men looked in awe as she stretched her arms out to her side and let them stare.

On her shoulders were two pentacles, one apiece; one was in the same sunburst as on Dean's chest, but the other was done up in a tribal-style crescent moon. At the base of her neck, hidden underneath her collar was a devil's trap, specifically, the Seal of Solomon; however, it was in dire need of a touch-up. In between her shoulder blades was a medium-sized green-brown-and-tan Celtic cross, and underneath it was another motto: 'Sic Vis Pacem, Para Bellum: Veni, Vidi, Vici.'. Her back was a beautiful piece of art, and Dean tried his best not to salivate over the table.

As she slipped back into her shirt, her father went to smack her on the head again, but she grabbed his wrist. Glaring at him, she bent his entire hand backwards slightly, a visible threat to all watching. "Dad: thirty-three years old now. Got the first one when I was twenty-one. All of them are legal. Lastly, my body. Deal with it."

Dean quirked an eyebrow at her; he was silently asking when she got them all. "The pents I got when I was finishing my paramedic course, at twenty-one." She paused to glare at Bobby, still massaging his hand. "I got the seal after Parris Island, and the motto on my arm after my first tour overseas. The cross on my back was after my third tour, and the mottos after my second tour in Iraq." She excused herself from the table and they listened to the sound of her crutches hitting the floor as she left the house.

Dean found her later in the afternoon, bent over the open hood of a '52 Camaro in the garage. The sound of Linkin Park's 'Leave Out All The Rest' was blaring from a small radio perched on an impressive tool bench. He was scoping them out as she wiped oil off her hand and stood up, closing the hood.

"Dean." She got her crutches and turned back to him, two beers from the cooler in hand. "May I ask why you made the deal?"

He sighed and closed his eyes, taking one of the beers that she offered. "It was for Sammy, Jack. I held him in my arms as he died from a stupid demon's competition; it was the same demon that had killed my mom and Sammy's girlfriend, that same one that took my dad from me, the one that tore my family apart. My world had ended right then and there. I just wanted my little brother, to hell with the consequences. So I made a deal at the crossroads outside of Lloyd's Bar; I got one year with my brother, and then I would go Hell as the consequence." He turned down the radio and accepted the beer as she sat next to him on the workbench. "Why you ask?"

"Overseas, I came close to death a lot of times, Dean. A lot more times than doing the job over here. When the explosion came over me and I got hit, I felt hands on me to keep me still. The thought racing through my head at that point was not about my men, but about Dad, and how I never told him that I'd miss him..." She took a long chug of the beer, not looking at Dean as she crutched her way over to the bench and leaned against them.

Between the two of them, there was silence. Jack placed her empty beer on the bench. "Dean, to you and me, family's the only thing that matters in this life. Hunting is what we do, but we do it to keep families like ours safe for at least one more day. I know that if I were in your shoes and it was Dad in my arms, I'd make that deal, no hesitation. Yeah, he would curse my ass and call me seven different kinds of idjit, but that time I would have with him would be the most precious thing he could ever give me."

Dean couldn't speak. What the gunnery sergeant, what Jack had told him was deep. What she had just spoken was exactly how he was felt. Sure, this job saved lives, but how many hunters died without saying goodbye to their loved ones? How many of them never loved, for fear that they would die on the job? The two of them were lucky, in that Jack had her dad and Dean had his brother, but not every hunter was so blessed.

Placing his beer next to her, he leaned over and traced the words of the tattoo on her arm with his index finger, making the hair on her airs stand on end. Before he could get closer, she placed a reluctant hand on his shoulder to stop him.

"You have three weeks left, Dean. I don't want to make you regret this." The battle of her emotions was clear on her face, but she was well disciplined, thanks to the Corps. Dean had no such training, but his face was the same: trying to hide what he was feeling underneath his mask.

Dean shook his head. "I don't regret making the deal. I just regret leaving Sammy and Bobby... I regret not finding you earlier." But as he leaned closer to her, Bobby came into the garage.

"Jacklyn! Time to go!" She and Dean moved apart; Jacklyn cursed for want of a better time. Bobby looked a little confused as he saw the two of them so close together that he paused for a moment.

"Dad, Dean's gonna take me; I want to show him how my baby rides. Don't worry about it." Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the keys and gave them to Dean. "Wanna see how she handles?"

* * *

Dean was impressed; that ride was smooth on the unusually clear road, rounding corners with ease and gaining speed with the touch of the accelerator that was so reminiscent of his Impala. They arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital in no time at all, in fact, cutting the hour and a half trip in half, but it was painful for him to watch her limp her way to the entrance. He followed her into the hospital, but he was directed into the lobby to sit and wait in earnest for her until the doctors were finished with her.

Jack was admitted quickly, having a previously booked appointment with Capt. Johnson; they had agreed upon it overseas when they were both still in Iraq, and he had simply relayed it to his secretary here at Bethesda when he returned. She was helped into a wheelchair by an overly perky nurse and was parked in a small procedure room just down the hall from the emergency rooms. When the nurse finished asking her standard set of questions and taking her vital signs, Jack stood up and changed into the hospital issue shirt and pants that they had waiting for her before sitting down at the edge of the bed.

Within moments, Capt. Johnson came through the doors in his service uniform and mandatory lab coat of the docs. He was a tall man from the Dark Continent, but his brown eyes were warm today. Despite the lack of hair, his head was not egg-shaped, but rather rounded. It suited him, since his personality off work was more of a giant teddy bear than of a hard-core Marine.

"Gunnery Sergeant Singer?" She stood up and gave him a salute, which he returned. "It's been a while, has it not?" She shook his hand when he saluted her back. "Only twelve days ago, if I'm correct. How's the leg?"

"It's been better, sir." She stared straight ahead at him. The scar running down her eye (if he recalled correctly, she got that particular scar from a rebel in a knife fight; she won, but she got the trophy to prove it) made her look fierce, but when she had no emotion on her face, it served as a visual reminder that this war was tougher than anything anyone could have possibly imagined, and that she was one of the lucky ones to come back.

Before pulling on a pair of gloves, he rubbed the top of his bald head. The giant African-American normally could intimidate any soldier that came under his care with a single glance, but with this gunny he was friendly and easygoing. She had overcome much to get where she was, and in his book, she had earned her stripes. He was her mentor during her training at Camp LeJeune, and he had pulled many strings to get her under his command, but he would never tell her that. He would also never tell her that she was his best pupil and subordinate, and that was a rare compliment indeed.

"All right, Gunny. Lay down on the bed. I'll assess the sutures; if the skin is well approximated, then I'll remove them. If they're still intact, and there's no infection, you can leave after I remove the stitches. Deal?" He brought a stool closer to the bed for him to sit on.

"Yes, sir." She got on the bed and laid back and took off her pants and lifted up her shirt. She looked away as he gently touched her legs and torso and assessed the bruising. It had faded some since yesterday, but she was still sore. Her skin was healing nicely, although she would keep these scars for the rest of her days. That would be a story to tell her children, one day in the future.

Approving of the rate of the healing, Capt. Johnson pulled out a sterilized package of scissors and tweezers from his pocket. "Gunny, do you want some fentanyl before I begin?" As he expected, she shook her head; she was one of the most stubborn soldiers under his command, and he often commended her to his peers after she had completed her Corpsman training as one of the toughest female Marines that he had seen in a long time; again, she didn't know that fact, and he wasn't going to tell her.

They were both quiet as Capt. Johnson slowly cut out the sutures one by one, removing them with the tweezers as he went. Sixty-six lacerations, with ten to fifteen sutures apiece, led to a long procedure time. The only sign that Jack felt anything was the occasional grimace on her face and the fist near her side that tightened and made her knuckles go white.

It was two hours all told, but Capt. Johnson finished quickly. None of the lacerations had opened again, and the swelling and bruising would go down with time. He wrapped her leg up in gauze and her torso in another set of tensors. "Now Gunny, for the next week, avoid doing a lot of strenuous activity. Use your crutches to transport yourself around. Get help when you need it. Is that understood?" He raised one of his eyebrows as she slid back into her civvies.

"Yes, sir." She let her eyes light up, but her face remained stoic. They both knew that she would try to do things on her own, but he had to give the orders anyway for hospital liability reasons.

"Dismissed, Gunnery Sergeant." As she made to leave, he remembered something. "Oh, Jack! Give Ducky my regards when you see him in two days, would you?"

She cocked an eyebrow; who was Ducky? She shook her head as she picked up her crutches and the duffel by the door. Giving her CO one last salute, she discharged herself and headed back to the front doors.

Dean had waited for her anxiously, reading through the trash magazines that the hospital provided and twisting the washer ring on his left hand. His heart leapt when he stood up as he saw that she walked toward him from down the hall, her crutches under her shoulders as per the doc's orders. They spoke no words but he matched her pace as she walked out to the parking lot. Before he started up the Camaro, he sprang into action. Leaning across to her seat, he placed a kiss on her lips that shocked the hell out of the both of them. Closing her eyes, she returned the kiss before leaning back in her chair.

Life just got a hell of a lot more complicated...

* * *

Two days had passed, and Dean and Jacklyn had avoided each other like the plague. If they entered the room together, one of them would think of a reason to leave. It was amazing that Bobby and Sam both noticed nothing going on between the two of them; Jacklyn was sure that Bobby's patented father-sense would pick it up, but he remained oblivious. Neither of them wanted to do this, but like teenagers in high school, they made out in her room and in the back closets. Bobby and Sammy were to know nothing about this, but Dean and Jacklyn became fervently in love with each other.

However, life had to move on. Dean and Sam were heading back to South Dakota with Bobby to his salvage yard to do more research to get him out of his deal. Jack had to stay in Quantico because her new job started today with the Naval Criminal Investigative Services. At 1200, she was supposed to report to her new superior, NCIS Director Shepard.

She was getting dressed in her utility uniform, straightening out the pins on her lapels, when someone knocked at her door. Dean quietly entered, fiddling with something in his hand. "Jack..." She pressed her fingers against his lips, shaking her head. She leaned forward and kissed him as she removed her fingers. Releasing him slowly, she let him go and let him speak his mind.

He tried again. "Jacklyn, I... I know that we got to leave today. But... here." He shoved out his hand and pressed something into her palm. As she opened up her hand, she saw a simple wooden ring. Rubbing it in between her fingers, she felt the smooth texture of the wood, the layers of clear varnish covering the piece of ebony. Trying her best not to speak, else to ruin the moment, she slid it onto her left ring finger. She looked at Dean's hand; he was wearing a duplicate on his ring finger.

Taking him into an embrace, she silently cried; all of her training went through the window as she said goodbye to her lover. "Dean, you come back to me, you hear? If you ever need back-up, you got my number." She gave him one last kiss. "I wish you didn't have to go." Both of them knew that she wasn't just talking about the return trip to South Dakota. Just like that, he left her standing there. Making one final decision, she wiped her eyes and grabbed her camera. "Hey, guys!" She limped her way down the stairs before the Winchester boys left. "Can I?" Without a word, Dean and Sam sat on the hood of the Impala as she took a photograph. Embracing Sam, she ruffled his hair and let them leave. Turning to her dad, she hugged him too before letting him slide into the back seat. Dean looked sad as he started her up and backed his baby out of her driveway.

And just like that, they were gone.


	4. Chapter 4

She walked into the second floor of the NCIS building, located in the Washington Navy Yard. Having shown her identification to the guards downstairs, she received an escort straight to the Director's office; she tolerated that, but not the cursory pat down to make sure that she wasn't concealing. The only weapons that she had on him were her registered sidearm and the K-BAR knife that she had tucked in its hip holster. She looked around discretely as her escort took her near the bullpen and found the team that she would be looking after. Little did she know, but she wasn't the only one doing reconnaissance.

"Who's she, Boss?" Special Agent Tony DiNozzo looked over across the bullpen from where he was standing to the lead field agent, and retired Marine, Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Gibbs was reading from his computer screen, his blue eyes squinting a little without his glasses; however, when he glanced up at DiNozzo, instantly Tony got the squirming feeling in his stomach like when he used to go to the principal or before his father. His grey hair was shorter to his skull, shaved closer on the side. Even with his 'retirement' two years ago, he never lost the touch of making Tony feel insignificant with a glance.

"What?" Jethro looked up from the report he was reading and got a quick look at the Gunnery Sergeant being led up the stairs to the Director's Office; he quirked an eyebrow before leaning back in his chair to rub his tired eyes. He didn't have a case to work, there was no paperwork to be done, and he was bored. Still, Director Jenny Shepard required his presence here, and so he would come and sit at his desk instead of working on his boat.

"The lady being led up the stairs to Director Shepard's office, Boss." That time, it was Agent Tim McGee; even he glanced up at her as the door closed behind her and the two men escorting her stood guard at the door. Tim's fingers were tapping on the keyboard, working his magic as he organized his beloved hard drive for the umpteenth time this year. Today, for a change, his dark brown locks were combed straight off his face to make the widow's peak, the ever-observant green eyes, and the round lines of his face more prominent.

"She's a Marine, gentlemen." Officer Ziva David, their Mossad liaison, sat behind her desk while twiddling her knife between her fingers. "I doubt she'd respond to being called a 'babe', Tony." She sat in her chair, her black hair tied off her face in a braid. Her tanned skin was paler from the winter, but it was now regaining its usual pallor. Her brown eyes flicked from Gibbs to Tim to Tony and back in a circle, always looking out for her team.

"Did I call her a babe, Ziva?" Tony DiNozzo turned to face his teammate. His brown hair was messily combed today; he was probably late getting up, again. Still, his hazel eyes were gleaming with the aftermath of his morning coffee. The designer shirt and pants that he was wearing was neatly pressed, for all that he was just barely late getting in this morning.

"Tony, the sounds of your thoughts can be heard in New York City." Gibbs tore his eyes off the report and looked to the entrance of the bullpen. He really wasn't paying that much attention to the conversation, but Tony needed to be put in his place. The Director wanted to see this particular Marine for a reason, and he would find out why soon enough.

"Yeah, Boss." That was all it took to shut Tony up. Still, his eyes shot up one last time to the closed doors of the Director's office. What was going on up there?

"Madam Director." Jacklyn saluted as the Director stood behind her desk. The escort that had led her through the bullpens of NCIS and to the office now stood at the doors to the Director's outer office. The secretary made her wait outside with her until the Director had called for her; luckily, it wasn't a very long wait. Her leg was beginning to ache again, and she had left her pain medication at home.

"At ease, Gunnery Sergeant." Director Jenny Shepard took her seat as she placed her glasses on her nose so that she could read the folder on top of her desk. Today, her brilliant red hair was tied into a severe looking bun to match the crisp dress pants and silk shirt that she was wearing; later today, she would face down the Director of the CIA, and she wanted to feel her best. "Would you like to have a seat?"

"No, ma'am. I'll be fine." Jacklyn fiddled with her crutches until they sat comfortably underneath her shoulder. There was no need for her to sit, just yet.

Jenny Shepard took her time reading through the report. The young marine standing in front of her was highly decorated and especially young for a female gunnery sergeant; Jenny thought that it would take more for a female to get that rank because the men would get them first. Only thirty-three years old, and she could probably kick Gibbs' ass, maybe even Ziva's once the crutches came off; most definitely, she could school Tony and McGee.

Every year since she joined the Corps, her evaluations had steadily increased. A trained Hospital Corpsman after passing USMC Basic Training, she was awarded an Expert Marksmanship badge in both rifle and pistol after Parris Island, two Purple Hearts and a Meritorious Service Award, two Marine Corps Good Conduct medals, the Sea Service Deployment ribbons, the Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal, two Overseas Service ribbons, the Afghanistan and Iraq Campaign Medals, the Combat Action ribbon, both the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal and Service Medal, as well as several Bronze and Silver Stars during her unprecedented six consecutive tours of Iraq and two tours on cruisers.

And now her orders, all the way from the SECNAV himself, were for her to report to NCIS for a medical officer position under Ducky. She looked up over the top of the file to see that the Marine was still standing and looking straight at her. "Gunnery Sergeant Singer, please take a seat. You will be standing for a while, but only if you insist." She watched as the gunny think about it, and then as she shuffled to the edge of the offered seat and slowly sat down; it was obviously that she was trying her best not to wince.

"Recent injury, Gunnery Sergeant?" Jenny put the file down to stare at the Marine before her. She wanted to see how the Marine responded to questions.

"Permission to speak frankly, ma'am?" Jenny shook her head as the Marine training kicked in and the formalities began. Was this was Gibbs was like before he joined up with NIS?

"Of course, Gunnery Sergeant."

"Please call me Jacklyn. Only my CO and XO call me by my rank, and the other nicknames are for my brothers-in-arm to call me, ma'am." She smiled at the little eyebrow quirk that the Director offered her way, but that was all the reaction she was going to get. Jacklyn, too, was judging the Director's reaction, as she had done with all of her COs in the past.

"All right then, Jacklyn. I ask again: is that a recent injury?"

"Fourteen days old, ma'am. I received it ten days before I was scheduled to end my tour. My CO ordered me to use the crutches to travel on, to help make sure that my wounds don't re-open, ma'am." Taking another look at the file that laid open on the Director's desk, Jacklyn continued, "Ma'am, that's why I received the most recent Purple Heart, ma'am. I continued to fight and watch out for my men even as I ran the risk of losing my leg and liver, ma'am. My CO, Captain David Johnson, MD, told me that it was a miracle that I survived with nothing but lacerations and bruises, ma'am." Making her face Marine stoic, she asked, "What else would you like to know, ma'am?"

Director Shepard smiled. "What are your orders from SECNAV?"

Jacklyn looked shocked at the question. "Begging your pardon, ma'am, but my orders didn't come from SECNAV, at least not to my knowledge. They were given to me by my CO, Capt. David Johnson, as a favor to an old friend." She dug through her memory. "Capt. Johnson told me that 'Ducky and his NCIS friends need someone to keep them patched up'."

Director Shepard nodded. "Well, Gunnery Sergeant, he applied for you to become our on-site medical officer. Those orders came through from SECNAV to me. Are you up to the task?" She stood to her feet.

Gathering up her crutches, Jacklyn stood up and placed them underneath her arms. "Ma'am, yes, ma'am." She saluted to the Director; instead, Jenny placed out a hand for her to shake. Slowly, Jacklyn lowered her salute and took the Director's hand.

Jenny gave the Marine's hand one firm shake. "Now, come with me. It's time to meet the team."

Jenny dismissed the escort and walked slowly to accommodate the slow-moving gunnery sergeant. By and far, she was impressed. The gunnery sergeant would make an excellent addition to the team. Now she just had to match up with Gibbs' standards. Somehow, as she walked down the stairs and into the entrance of the bullpen, Gibbs would have no problem accepting this new Marine.

"Everyone, this is Gunnery Sergeant Jacklyn Singer." That got the team's attention. "She's accepted the position of on-site medic for the Major Case Response Team. McGee," she turned over to Tim, "can you call Abby and Ducky up here, please?" Tim was prompt and did just that. Pointing to the others in the bullpen, she introduced them as, "Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, Special Agent Timothy McGee, Senior Field Agent Jethro Gibbs, and Officer Ziva David, our liaison with Mossad."

"Jen, I didn't know that there was a new team opening." Gibbs leaned against his desk, sipping at his coffee.

"To tell the truth, Special Agent Gibbs, neither did I until her new orders came down from SECNAV." Jenny stared at him with a warning glance, but the Marine standing before them all spoke up before she had a chance to.

"Permission to speak, Director?" Gibbs looked over at the Marine as she adjusted her crutches underneath her shoulder; she was probably a desk jockey looking for a new position. Jen gave a nod. What happened next was most unexpected.

Singer turned towards Gibbs and nailed him with a stare that usually sent Tony quivering whenever Gibbs used it on him. "Special Agent Gibbs, I just got back from six years in Iraq. I got kicked from kingdom come by an IED, and have not the time nor the patience for your looks that suggest that I am nothing more than a desk jockey. So deal with it. This was as much of a surprise to me when it turned out that my orders were not from my company CO but from SECNAV." She placed her crutches against Tony's desk and reached for the file that Jenny held in her hand. Limping without a grimace on her face, she handed the file over to Gibbs. "This is what you're looking for, correct?"

Gibbs gave her a look, measuring her up. Taking another sip of his coffee, he yelled at Tony, "Bring Gunnery Sergeant Singer's CV on screen, DiNozzo."

"On it, Boss." With a few clicks of the keys on his keyboard, Singer's picture and service record was on the screen. Jacklyn moved back to Tony's desk and picked up her crutches so that she could stand comfortably as her new team inspected her.

The team was silent for a moment as they read through Jacklyn's dossier. Tony's eyebrows were shot up beyond his hairline as he read that she had indeed completed six tours, but that she had never gone home in between; she had stayed in Iraq for six years, four more than her original orders. Apparently, she had volunteered for the other two tours. He shot a look at the Marine as she silently stood at ease as best she could with the crutches.

Ziva nodded her head as she saw the list of medals and commendations that the Marine had received over the course of her career. This woman was not to be messed with. In fact, the gunnery sergeant was a hero.

McGee said nothing as he read over her education path. Graduating straight from high school into the emergency medicine program in Chesapeake, she worked only for a year before being recruited by USMC. After Basic Training, she went into the Corpsman program, the first Marine to do so. This woman was full of surprises.

Gibbs just read it over quietly. Although he would never say it or show it, he was impressed. However, just because Jen gave the orders did not make her part of his team yet. He didn't trust her, but that would come.

Just then, the elevator dinged. Abby and Ducky came out of the elevator. "Jack?" The gunnery sergeant turned and saw her old friend running towards her. Abby hadn't changed a bit from when she last saw her in Chesapeake. Her black hair was still up in pigtails, her tattoos showing for the world to see the highly misunderstood Goth forensic analyst.

"Abs!" She raised out one arm for Abby to slam into her choking embrace. "It's good to see you!" However, she was tapping Abby's back to let her go, for the sake of her injuries.

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. "Abs, you know her?"

Abby looked shocked as she looked over at the team leader. "Gibbs, this is Jacklyn Singer, gung-ho Marine and best friend. God, we've known each other since…" She paused to think.

"Since we were kids, Abs?" Jack laughed and playfully punched her in the shoulder. "My dad and her uncle work together, and so Abby and I would stay over at each other's houses while they were off on their trips."

Gibbs gave a little nod. "All right. You're in."

Jacklyn's eyebrow rose up when the elderly man that had accompanied Abby in the elevator spoke up. "What's going on, Jethro? Timothy didn't give a reason for my being pulled out of my morgue."

"Jacklyn, this is Dr. Donald Mallard, our forensic pathologist." Jenny took control of the introductions once more. "Ducky, this is Gunnery Sergeant Jacklyn Singer; she is the new medical officer for Gibbs' team."

Dr. Mallard shot a look over at Gibbs, who simply shrugged, before smiling and extending a hand to her. "My dear, please call me Ducky. Everyone does." He had a Scottish accent that reminded Jacklyn of her mother, but she tamped down the emotion.

"Ducky, then." Jacklyn took the hand and shook it firmly. "Capt. David Johnson wanted me to pass on his regards."

"David? I haven't seen that lad in ten years! How is he?" A smile cracked on Ducky's face.

"Stationed in Bethseda now, Ducky." She looked around the team before looking back at the Director. "Well, ma'am, with your permission, I'd like to get started."

Jacklyn was impressed as Abs and Ducky led her down to her new room, just offside of the morgue. As she walked around the room, inspecting her new surroundings, she was aware that Abs was standing against the doorway. Jacklyn gestured with her head for her to come in. Abs, looking around, came into the medical room and closed the door behind her.

The Director had pulled out all of the stops for her new quarters. The three wall cupboards were stocked with the same supplies that one would expect in a hospital: gauze, gloves, different types of bandages and dressings, to syringes and various vials of drugs. In the corner were IV poles and a vital signs machine. On the wall above the bed was a blood pressure monitor. On the wall to the left of the door was a sink; next to the sink was a computer for her records. Underneath the sink was a mini-fridge for ice packs and water. Against the far wall was the examining table; actually, it was more like a patient bed.

One of the requisites of the job was for Jacklyn to get re-certified in order to dispense medications. As a paramedic in the USMC, she had done that plenty of times, but her rank as a Corpsman would not be quite sufficient. So tomorrow, she would sit an exam that proved to the city of Washington DC that she was a capable medical practitioner.

Abby didn't care about that right now. As Jacklyn sat down on the bed, Abby sat next to her and began to sign. They would do this when they wanted to talk without the adults knowing what they were talking. _"So Jack, is your dad okay?"_

_"Yeah, Abs."_ Jack's fingers were rusty since she hadn't used sign language in a while, but the skill soon came back. _"He's alive and still hunting. What about your uncle?"_

_"He's still around." _Abby paused for a moment. _"Have you heard anything about the Winchester brothers?"_

This made Jack pause now herself. Instead of answering, she posed her own question back. _"Why?"_

_"I heard on the wind that Dean Winchester's going to die soon from a deal." _Jack stopped signing and rubbed the wooden ring on her finger.

"Abs, he is." A tear came to her eye. "God, Abs, he stayed at my place with his brother and my dad. They came to pick me up from JFK, and Dean and I just clicked. I remembered him from when we were young, and he is so different from then" For the first time in a long time, Jacklyn let her emotion out; she leaned forward and cradled her face in her hands. "I'm in love with a dead man walking, Abby. What do I do?"

Abby said nothing, but instead gently took her soldier friend into an embrace and let her cry against her shoulder. She looked up and saw Gibbs at the door, watching the emotional upheaval unfold. Gibbs let himself into the room, and waited until Jacklyn looked up at him. For once, she didn't care if the senior field agent saw that the Marine hero that he had just accepted onto his team was too emotional for the job. Instead, he knelt before her and waited until she met his gaze. "You make sure that you live every day that you have with him to the best, and when he goes, you respect his memory and then let him go." Jacklyn nodded her head and stood, the tears gone. Abby smiled at her, and Gibbs nodded his head. "You'll do, Jacklyn. Just don't let it happen again."


	5. Chapter 5

Over the next three weeks, life was bliss for Jacklyn. She was slowly getting back into a rhythm that didn't involve her getting shot at or losing soldier friends. Abby was there to make her life fun: every day she'd stop by without fail and play new music for her to listen to. However, the heavy bass tones that Abby thrived on weren't the kind of songs that were in Jacklyn's playlist; she leaned more towards quieter jazz and rock bands. Still, the two friends made up for time lost over the last seven years.

The rest of the team was slow to accept her at first, simply because she was such an anomaly. She was a walking paradox: a woman Marine, and a war-time medic working for NCIS. She was often seen wearing worn blue jeans and white or black t-shirts underneath flannel shirts, her Marine-issue sidearm visible to everyone when she wore it; otherwise, she kept it in her bag within easy reach. On the days that she had to report to Quantico and her superiors, she came to work dressed in her utilities. As typical of Tony, he tried flirting with her from the moment she started working. As she was stocking the cupboards on more than one occasion, she caught Tony blalantly looking at her ass. To deal with that, she began to wear her K-BAR knife in its back sheath to deter him, not to mention that she always kept her gun within reach. After that, he stopped trying to imagine her shirtless and panting.

Ducky was the quickest to accept her because he began to teach her basic anatomy of the autopsy. In return, she didn't say a word while he would tell his stories during his time with the 'patients'. In fact, they would often trade stories as she watched him work on slow days, constantly brushing up on her anatomy and physiology. She also let him take out her stitches; similarly to her CO, he was shocked that she was able to survive the explosion with this little damage. She simply nodded and hopped out his autopsy bench when he was finished.

Tim and Ziva were a bit more agreeable to the new member, after she got out her stitches and schooled Ziva in a mixed martial arts match. After that, Ziva was suspicious of her; it was not easy for an officer of the Mossad to accept that she was beaten, but Jacklyn made sure to keep her extra-curricular activities a secret. She told Ziva that her skills came from her training, but also from luck and experience. McGee warmed up to her much faster when she decided to leave his hard drive alone with the promise that he would leave his geek-speak at the door. Jack, like Gibbs, couldn't stand it when Tim and Abby went into the details of their procedures.

After her little outburst on the first day, Gibbs set her straight with his unwritten set of rules. She had to agree with all of them, but one stood out in particular: never come between a Marine and his coffee. Every day, without fail, she would be in her office with a cup of coffee in her hands going over old medical records of the team. Some days, she would even bring Gibbs a cup when he had worked during the night on the cases. Eventually, she had a coffee pot set up by her sink for refills during the day. Gibbs was often seen down in her office getting coffee and talking to her about her days in Iraq; he would share some of his experiences of Desert Storm, and through that, the two Marines grew closer together. Gibbs came to be a surrogate for Bobby and Rufus together when she needed some advice.

Speaking of Bobby, she got the photo of the Winchester brothers and Bobby developed and framed so that it could stand by her computer. When Tony saw the picture the first time, he blanched when she told him that these were her brothers, and that Bobby was her father, and that yes, all of them could easily kick Tony to the curb in a second.

In fact, the worst that she had to deal with was a week and a half after her arrival, when the team went out to Bethesda in order to track down a fugitive Marine. They had tracked the fugitive, Corporal Damon Werth, to the Walter Reed Hospital. Apparently, the corporal was suffering from PTSD, and that he thought that he was still in Iraq and that his teammates were in danger still; he had gone to rescue them, and when McGee tried to arrest him, everything went to pot after that. She had just come in from a meeting at Quantico, so she was attired in her utilities.

Everyone on the team was injured, but Ziva was the first one she saw to. The area above her right eye was beginning to bruise, and so Jacklyn simply cracked an ice pack and gave it to her to use. Ziva wasn't one to bother with pain meds, and so she didn't force any on her. Ziva thanked her with her eyes and then went to go type up the incidence report.

Tony and McGee weren't long in the coming after her. McGee was the worst: his shoulder was dislocated. Getting him to stand still while she numbed his shoulder with Novocaine before applying the right amount of pressure to relocate it was difficult enough, without the additional trouble of Tony making fun of him and Tim retorting. To keep him quiet, Jacklyn set up one of the IVs into his hand and added a moderate dose of lorazepam to relax the anxious senior agent.

"Why'd you do that, Ms. Singer?" Tim had asked him as she got him ready to relocate his bummed arm.

"The Novocaine's had time to kick in, McGee." Placing her weight behind her hand, she pushed his arm into the socket with a grunt. Working quickly, she secured his shoulder with a tensor bandage and a sling so that his shoulder could stay in place as it healed. "Because, McGee, Tony's annoying, but on anti-anxiety meds, he's at least quiet while they last. Plus, now he won't whine when I break his nose back into place." Both of them laughed for a moment. "All right, Tim, stay here for a while. Ice that shoulder for an hour, fifteen minutes on, fifteen minutes off." She cracked another icebag from the mini-fridge offset under the sink and pressed it against the appropriate places for him to ice. "Oh yeah, Tim. I keep telling you: it's Singer, Doc, or Jack. Don't call me 'Miss'; I work for a living." She administered some additional fentanyl sublingually, and let Tim ice his sore arm before getting back to work.

Now she turned to Tony as he laid out on the bed, totally out of it. She raised the bed up to her height and increased the angle of the bed's head. With a simple motion, she pushed the damaged cartilage back into place. He didn't even flinch as she taped it in place and carefully cleaned away the blood. She locked the IV and let the lorazepam wear off. He would have the mother of all headaches when it wore off, but it would teach him to be an ass while she was working.

"Jack!" Gibbs was standing in the doorway of her office. Giving him a quick look-over, she sighed in relief: he was the only one still standing, so to speak.

"Yeah, Gibbs?" She never called him 'boss' but at least she never called him 'sir'.

"Come with me." He walked towards the interrogation rooms.

"Gibbs, what's going on?"

"I want you to help me interrogate this suspect." That raised her eyebrows.

"You want me to help interrogate Corporal Werth?" Gibbs looked at her before he smiled. Of course she had read up on the case.

"No. Talk to him, Marine to Marine." He opened the door for her and she entered in, making sure to keep her face blank.

Corporal Damon Werth… once she saw him, she recognized the name; she quietly looked him over for injuries as he fought with the cuffs around his wrists. She and her fellow Alpha Company Timberwolves had worked with his unit from Beta Company for one month. He was captured soon after she and her men were transferred back to Fallujah a month before her tour's end. "Corporal Punishment, it's been a while."

His head snapped up as he tried to recognize her, but he tried to salute when he saw her rank. "Gunnery Sergeant Wolf?" She nodded her head once before looking over at Gibbs. He tossed the key to the cuffs on the table in front of Werth as she went silent and still.

"You got yourself in a mess, Corporal. Gonna have to get yourself out." Gibbs was calm, talking like a civilian. From the look in Werth's eyes, he wasn't going to talk to Gibbs, not civvie to soldier. "What seems to be the problem?" Gibbs' voice was quiet, relaxed as he walked around the other side of the table.

As soon as he crossed the corner, he got in the Marine's face. "What seems to be the problem, Marine?" That voice, that tone of the drill sergeant, of the wars brought back everything for Jacklyn. Her spine stiffened immediately, but Werth had the better reaction.

He sat at attention as best he could, staring straight ahead at the one-way mirror. "I want to kill someone, sir!"

Gibbs lowered his voice to talk in the Marine's ear. "Anyone in particular?"

"Anyone will do, sir."

Gibbs sat on the edge of the table, looking right at Werth. Jacklyn came closer, her hands held behind her back. It was her turn to ask the questions. "Why is that, Corporal? Does that feel right to you?" She, too, kept her voice low, but she kept her hackles raised as she almost prowled around to Werth's other side.

"No, sir, Doc. It does not." His face began to furrow, like he was confused. Jacklyn saw that he was irritated with something. "I'm not right, Doc. But it's not my fault."

Jacklyn looked into his eyes. "Tell me what it feels like, Corporal." Her eyes narrowed as Werth tried to find the words.

He kept his teeth close together, so his answer came out as, "needles and pins." Gibbs repeated the answer, just as perplexed as her, until Werth reiterated. "No sir, needles and _pills._" He began to look desperate. "They put a cloud in my head. It's dark behind my eyes. I can't see in there."

This time, it was Gibbs. "Who drugged you?"

Werth looked pitiful as Jacklyn observed him. "I don't know. I can't find it. I can't remember." He shook his hands, trying to figure it out. He looked up at the both of them. "You got to help me."

Jacklyn stood up and looked to Gibbs, nodding once. Gibbs placed his hand on Werth's shoulder, saying, "At ease, son. We will."

As they made to leave, Werth spoke up again. "GSW, you promise?"

Gibbs looked confused, but Jacklyn moved back to crouch at Werth's eye level. "I promise, Damon." There was a moment of clarity in his eyes as she left. Ducky and Ziva were waiting for them in the hall.

"Did you see that, Jacklyn? His symptoms are in no way exclusive to PTSD." Ducky seemed like a man on the edge of solving a difficult problem.

"Yeah, I did, Ducky." He was the only one that she permitted to call her Jacklyn, only because he constantly referred to Abby as 'Abigail'.

Gibbs looked between the two of them. "You believe him?"

Jack rubbed the back of her neck. "Yeah, Gibbs. I do."

Ducky went even further. "Irritability, hostility, delusion… all of these can be side effects to any number of medications." He opened up the file in his hand. "And in his field evaluation, I found references to anxiety, paranoia, and they all predate his capture."

Gibbs looked over to Jacklyn for confirmation. "Yeah. In the month that I worked with him, Damon was always suspicious of his surroundings, never fully relaxing. I just thought he was being cautious, but I guess I was wrong."

Ziva backed her up. "I don't get the impression that he suffered in the field." The bruise on her eye was purpling up, healing well.

"Well, that seemed to be his natural habitat." Ducky turned back to Gibbs. "You have developed a rapport. Perhaps you can convince him to part with urine and blood samples." He turned to Jack, a gleam in his eyes like he was about to solve a riddle. "Or perhaps even you, Jacklyn, as it seems that you have an already-established relationship with the man."

Jacklyn nodded. "I'll take him down to my office. Ducky, I'm gonna need a copy of that file." But before she turned away, Gibbs grabbed her arm for a moment.

"Why'd he call you 'GSW', Jack?" At that, she just laughed.

"I never stood on formality with my fellow devil-dogs, Gibbs. They grew to call me 'Doc', 'Gunny'. In fact, I was named company mascot: Gunnery Sergeant Wolf. That got shortened to GSW. Plus, that was the injury under my care the most: gunshot wound." She cracked a smile before going back into the room.

"Damon, come with me."

* * *

She got the blood samples and urine easily from Damon; security followed them from the holding room to the infirmary, and there he was kept for the duration. Jacklyn locked up her drugs away in the morgue; she didn't know quite yet what he was drugged with, but she took no chances.

Damon was looking pathetic, and Jacklyn rubbed the scar on her eye as she took the blood. "I remember that, Doc." Damon chuckled once. Jacklyn remembered it as well.

"Yeah: Ramadi. Rogue knife wound, Corporal. You were the one that hauled my ass back to base." She withdrew the needle and taped the insertion site. Taking a quick look, she saw no other needle sites in his arms or fingers.

Security knocked on the door. "The file you requested, ma'am."

"Thanks." She stood over by her computer and read through his evals over the past year, keeping Damon always in her sight. Before coming into the Marines, Damon was diagnosed with a mild form of anemia. However, he had gotten it treated before applying with a strict regime of meds for two months before the docs labelled him cured. He had told her about it, saying how glad he was that he was able to serve, that it was in his blood to be a Marine.

Within a few minutes, there was another knock on her door. Two different security officers were standing there, waiting for something. "Ma'am, we received orders for a transfer." One of them proffered the paper for her to read through. SECNAV had ordered Werth to be transferred back to Bethesda, to be placed once more under the care of Dr. de la Casa. She nodded and helped Damon stand up.

"Damon, I'll be right back. You're going back to the hospital, but I'm coming with you. Trust me?"

He nodded his head. "I trust you, Gunny." With that, she ran up the stairs, file in hand, to find Gibbs. He was in the bullpen looking at a suit. "Gibbs! Werth's being transferred?" She took in the suit, and saw Director Shepard standing next to him.

"This is Gunnery Sergeant Jack Singer, the team medical officer. Jack, this is Senator Hawkins' PR secretary, Ray Vincent. He's to receive treatment at Bethesda so that he is prepared for his medal ceremony." Jack knew about that: Damon was going to receive a Silver Star in a day or two.

"The man is entitled to his medal." The suit was typing away on his cellphone, or else he wouldn't have seen the look of disbelief on both Jack and Gibbs' faces.

"All you care about is selling the war." Jack stood next to him with the same look on his face as Gibbs looked at him in disbelief.

That got the man's attention. "You don't support the war?"

Gibbs answered with, "I support the men fighting it."

The rep turned to Jack, the same disbelief in his eyes. "What about you?" He took her uniform in with a quick glance, but he stopped as he saw the expression emblazoned on her face.

Jack laughed once. "I fought in the war, but I support my brothers fighting in it." As the rep came closer to her, the grin on her face disappeared. Gibbs turned around when he heard something: Jack was growling at the rep, her upper lip raised in a menace.

"Wolf!" That one word brought her back. She shook her head and looked over to the Director. "Requesting permission to accompany the corporal to the hospital, ma'am, to continue caring for Corporal Werth?" Before the rep could refuse, Director Shepard nodded her head. With that, she walked past the rep with Gibbs to the elevator.

Ducky met up with them, but she tuned out the conversation until he mentioned, "anabolic steroids" as the elevator closed. She looked to him as he began to describe his symptoms and pointed them all towards the extremely long-term use of steroids. As the elevator reached the basement, she took Ducky's notes from him, added them to her file, hopped out the elevator and entered the ambulance as Damon was wheeled in; he was cuffed on his wrists and ankles with a leather band along his waist that connected the chains, all while being restrained to the stretcher.

When they reached Bethesda, she wheeled the stretcher onto the parking lot and got him to walk in of his own will. A Navy doctor was waiting for her. "Gunnery Sergeant Jack Singer?"

"Dr. de la Casa." She shook his head and walked with Damon into the secure inpatient wing. "We determined the cause of Corporal Werth's behaviour." She let the orderlies take Werth into the room for him to wait. She handed over Ducky's notes and let Dr. de la Casa see for himself. As his face turned into horrified resignation, Jack nodded. "Permission, Doctor, to be kept in the loop for his treatment? He and I worked together overseas." He nodded.

"Well, now that we know that it's steroid overdose, we can begin to rapid detox him." They both entered the room. "We will have to sedate him." Jacklyn undid the cuffs as de la Casa prepped the IV.

"Damon, we're gonna get you fixed. Like I promised." She took off the cuffs and made him lay down on the bed. The sedative worked almost instantaneously, knocking the Marine out. Working together, they placed Damon in hard restraints in case he woke up. De la Casa wrote up the orders and they both left. Jack stood outside and kept a watch over his room. Whoever was drugging the corporal might try to come again. She kept her Sig at her hip, the knife at her back. But no one came in and out of the room except the orderly to fulfill the doctor's orders.

Gibbs soon came with the rest of the team. Ziva and Gibbs came into the room with her and de la Casa. The doctor had ordered IV clonazepam over three to five days while the steroids cleared themselves. He looked so out of it, but it was worth it. Once this was cleared up, Damon could still be a Marine after this.

Gibbs woke up Damon. "Corporal Werth. Damon." He shook his leg.

Damon seemed very out of it, still quite groggy from the meds. "Where am I?" He made to bring his hands to his face, but he couldn't due to the heavy-duty restraints. "What's this?"

"Hospital. We're getting the steroids out of you." Gibbs looked at him, but Damon was confused.

"Steroids?" He looked as if he had no idea what he was talking about.

"Yeah. You remember?" Jack looked at Damon and then at her boss.

Ziva spoke up for a moment. "Who did this to you?"

Damon put his head back against the pillow. "They did this to me?" He began to moan and he leaned against as he went through a mild spasm.

De la Casa took out his penlight. "Like I said, he's very weak."

Jack came up next to him. "But not this weak" That was when Damon began to seize.

Gibbs backed away from the bed. "What's happening?"

De la Casa looked over to the machine that had controlled the drug entering his system. "His system's crashing. It's set too high." He moved to the side table and prepped one of the syringes he had ready. When Damon began to seize harder, Gibbs and Jack grabbed onto him to hold him down.

"What's that?" Ziva was against the bed side, but she was standing there looking helpless.

"Adrenaline." De la Casa tried to get close to the IV site on Damon's other arm, but the corporal was shaking too much. He handed it to Jack and held Damon in place. "Give it to him."

"Hold on, Damon." She muttered under her breath. As soon as the adrenaline entered his system, Damon came back to life. He fought all of them: Gibbs landed against the wall and on the floor, Jack on the floor with a busted lip and a broken wrist from when she landed on it when Damon threw her off, and Ziva was pushed up against the wall. Tony and Tim burst in with their weapons in hand, Gibbs at their side, when Damon collapsed.

"What just happened?" Tony looked around the room for a moment and took in the damage. Jack dragged herself over to check on Damon, the bones in her wrist protruding underneath her skin as she kept it close to her body.

De la Casa looked at them all in horror. "I don't understand this. His machine was cranked to the wrong level. The sedative was poisoning him."

Tony lowered his weapon. Gibbs walked over to Jack and gave her a hand to help her up. Taking a look at him and grimacing, she levered herself off the floor using the wall. She didn't pay attention to the conversation, only that she really wanted to slap Tony for trying to blame de la Casa for this. "It's the orderly, Tony." Everyone looked at her. "He's the only one that came into the room."

* * *

Jack spent the next hour as the team rounded up Jenkins (what a freaky name for an orderly, eh?) getting her wrist x-rayed and casted. She insisted that the cast be black, because she had to attend Damon's ceremony the next day. Within that space of fourteen hours, she was back in Damon's room, dressed in her blues. Gibbs and Ziva were with her, helping Damon get ready. She watched as Gibbs straightened out Damon's uniform and told him that he knew who was giving him the steroids.

Jack sighed. Earlier in the day, she discovered that fellow Corpsmen in Beta Company had been ordered to supply Werth covertly with the steroids for a Bio-Tech experiment that he wasn't aware of. Apparently, they had discovered him when he was in Iraq in his second tour and began giving him the drugs three times a month before he was captured, saying that they were his iron supplements. He truly was a lab rat. Someone used her friend as a test dummy.

Damon had proved himself a Marine. But now, it was up to the Corps if he would get the medal that he deserved. There was no word yet, so they all assumed that the ceremony was still a go. She nodded at Damon and left his room. The PR secretary from before yelled at them all that the ceremony was off. She rolled her eyes as she tucked her cover underneath her bad arm and growled once more at the suit. That got him shaking him in his pants.

Gibbs called her again. "Wolf." She stopped her growling, placed her cover back on her head, and strode out of the hospital.

Later that night, she came back. De la Casa turned a blind eye as she came back after visiting hours. She had something that she needed to give to Damon. As she came to his bedside, she opened up the case that held her first Silver Star. She had earned it when she covered her men as they fell back in the middle of a raid. She had saved three men from dying as she humped each of them into the truck and drove them back to camp; she had saved three lives, and so they gave her a medal.

Sighing, she placed it by his bedside; Damon was still sound asleep. As she made to leave, she bumped into Gibbs; he, too, held the case of a Silver Star in his hands. She nodded to him, placed her cover back on her head, and spoke only two words: "_Semper Fi._"


	6. Chapter 6

It was the call early on the morning of May 6th that changed Jacklyn's life. Out of instinct, she slipped her hand under her pillow and pulled out her knife as she made to fight the noise. Occasionally, she still had nightmares about her service overseas, but they were getting less and less frequent. As soon as she realized that it was the cell phone on her table, she sighed and tucked the knife away. She grunted as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and put the phone to her ear, not bothering to check the caller ID. "Gibbs? What's going on?"

"Jacklyn." It was her father's voice. That served like the cold shower that she needed to wake up.

"Dad? What's going on?" She rubbed the ring on her finger. "Is it Dean?"

"Jacklyn, come to New Harmony. We need some back up. We're going to take down Lilith."

"Where are you, Dad?" She slipped into her clothes as she rubbed the downy stubble on her head.

"We're just leaving my yard. Dean's got twenty hours left. Hurry." That was her father for her: to the point, and calm all the way. Slipping into her shoes, she picked up her shoulder bag and ran down to the entrance to her basement. She never told anyone about this room: not her father, not Gibbs when she invited him to her house for a beer. Not even Amelia, as she took care of her house when she was serving, was aware of this. She pushed aside the bookcase and pushed her hand against the biometric lock. The metal door (complete and pure iron) unlocked and she walked through it and down a small flight of stairs.

This was her weapons room. Side arms and sawed-off rifles were hung against the wall. Against one wall was complete ammo: everything from silver bullets (excellent for werewolves), salt ammo (ghosts and demons), and iron buckshot (witches and ghosts, as well). There were silver and iron blades, bottles of holy water, drawers of rosaries and charms, and little journals full of exorcisms. It was also a safety room for her: iron walls were dosed with holy water. The cot in the corner of the room and a small Bunsen burner for the canned goods and bottled water that she kept stocked was all she needed.

Placing the satchel on the bed, she stuffed in three belts of salt ammo and iron bullets, her silver-plated Sig-Sauer and Makarov, as well as a sawed-off shotgun; she couldn't use her sidearm, because it was too easy to trace. Off her knife rack, she pulled off three silver blades, strapping them alongside her K-Bar. Better to be safer than sorry, she tucked in a few rosaries for making holy water, two flasks of holy water, and her book of general exorcisms. As well, she tossed in her binoculars. She looked down at the cast on her arm and groaned a moment. She would just need to be careful with it: well, as careful as you could be without interfering with the job.

When she was ready, she slung the bag over her shoulder and ran up to her garage. Turning her Camaro to life, she zoomed off base and in the direction of New Harmony, Indiana. She had twenty hours left: the trip was eleven hours. She made it in nine. She parked outside the neighbourhood that Bobby said that the demon Lilith was staying. Following in the shadows of the trees, she climbed up a tree and made her nest. She was going to stay up here until Dean and company showed up.

It was ten that night when she heard the sounds below her. Grabbing her bag, she jumped from the tree branch and landed to have three sawed-offs pointing at her face. "Jesus, guys! You call in the cavalry to help you, not shoot at!" Her voice was a harried whisper. "Put the guns down, assholes! It's me!" When she saw Dean, she gave him a deep embrace, trying her best not to kiss him in front of her dad. "You all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." But he wasn't. She could see the bags under his eyes, the paleness of his face. Just as she was about to retort, something came up from behind her. Going solely on instinct, she slammed the demon against the chain-link fence and made to decapitate her but Sam stopped her. "Jack, stop! Please!" He was strong, but her knife just barely nicked the demon bitch's throat. "She's a friend!"

She looked at Sam incredulously, trying hard not to question his judgement before looking back at the demon. "You must be Ruby, huh?" She let go of the demon and sheathed her knife, holding her hands up to show that she was unarmed, at least for the moment.

"Good to meet you, too." She ignored the Marine and looked at Sam. "I want my knife back."

"How the hell did you get out?" Jack rubbed the devil's trap on the back of her neck, a constant reminder to her that anything could happen.

"What you don't know about me could fill a book, dumbass." Jack stared at the demon; she was just on the edge of decking her senseless, but she would probably just hurt the vessel instead.

"Enough, enough! Have the little catfight later. We gotta kill this demon before it kills Dean." Without any more discussion, she vaulted through the window and curled her finger at the boys. "Well, come on."

They entered the house, patrolling on silent feet. For the first time, the Winchesters saw Jacklyn Singer in action; with silent feet, she went ahead of them and cleared every room before they entered, always watching around her with her pistol ready to fire. They prayed that the next time they met, that she would be on their side. They had already found the husband of the traumatized family, and had to shut him up. Now they were after the daughter as well: it was the little eight year-old that was possessed by Lilith. Jack and Sam went upstairs while Dean scouted out the other rooms. However, when Sam was about to slit the girl's throat, Dean rushed in, saying that it wasn't in her anymore. They were too late: Lilith had already traded meatsuits.

It was six minutes to midnight, and there was not a whole lot left to do. Sam, Jack, Dean, and Ruby were back in the front hall. Dean turned to Sam, trying to restrain him from doing something stupid. "I'm sorry. I mean, this is all my fault. I know that. But what you're doing, it's not gonna save me. It's only gonna kill you."

Sam looked so hurt, so lost, that it tore up Jacklyn's heart-strings. "Then, what am I supposed to do?"

At that, Dean cracked a little grin. "Keep fighting. Take care of my wheels. Sam… Remember what Dad taught you, okay?" He nodded a little before adding, "And remember what I taught you, too."

Jack let the tears fall as she embraced Dean. "I swear, Dean: you're the craziest hunter I will ever know." Not caring anymore, they kissed passionately just as midnight struck.

Oddly enough, it was the demon that spoke up. "I'm sorry, Dean. I wouldn't wish this upon my worst enemy."

Dean looked away, pathetically grinning at a spot in the ground. He spoke the word that chilled them all. "Hellhound."

Jack looked in the same direction, while Sam looked at Dean. "Where?"

Dean pointed with his chin. "There." The four of them stood for a moment before running into the dining room and barricading the door as Dean hurriedly spread some goofer dust at the door and window. For now, they were safe. But time was always the enemy of a hunter. Sam was about to give up a knife to Ruby when Dean pushed him away, looking at the demon with growing horror. "That's not Ruby!" Jacklyn pumped her shotgun and loaded a clip into the demon, but she just swatted away the shots as if they were nothing before pinning Dean to the table, Jacklyn to the floor next to him, and Sam to the wall behind her.

Jacklyn lifted her head and looked up at the demon smiling triumphantly at them all as they struggled against the supernatural bonds. "We meet at last, bitch."

Lilith came close and kicked her in the ribs where her nearly healed bruises were. "Bad little girl, huh, Jacky? Did you not learn your lesson in Iraq?" Sam looked at her as Lilith smirked down at the hunter. "Oh, you didn't tell them, did you?"

"Go to hell." Another kick and a twist of her powers had Jacklyn screaming for a few seconds.

"Well, I guess my friends will have to teach it to you again. But that's for later. You're not the one I came for." She looked over at Dean before opening up the door. "Sic him, boy."

Dean was dragged off the table and Jacklyn and Sam were made to watch as the invisible hellhounds decimated his body. At least his death was quick. Lilith smashed her foot into Jacklyn's still-healing wrist and shoulder before turning back to Sam. The last thing that she remembered was a bright light filling up the room. Jacklyn felt the power of the demon let her go; she must have gone back to Hell. She felt something akin to wings protecting her, but that didn't matter. The grey shirt that she was wearing was covered with blood, Dean's blood. She rolled over on her side, the tears coming her face anew.

His eyes were so dull; it was as if he was staring right through them as she and Sam knelt next to him and sobbed. She placed her hand against his heart, laying her head against the bloody remnants of his right lung; his skin was so cold.

She looked up at Sam, nothing left inside of her. She reached down to Dean's hand and removed his ring, the twin of her own. She also took the pendant that he wore habitually and gave it to Sammy. He and Bobby would take care of the salt-and-burn, the only funeral that a hunter could expect to get. She had to get away from him. She couldn't do this again.

The ride back to Washington was surreal. It was as if she wasn't driving at all; instead, she was flying. It was a matter of six hours when she returned back to Quantico, pushing her car to its limits. The MP at the gate never questioned the blood on her face, just let her in back to her house. It was as if he didn't see it. Jacklyn worked on automatic, getting herself to work for oh seven hundred. Everything had to continue on as if nothing had changed. No one was to see the agony that she was in, or the fact that her heart was gone.

* * *

Gibbs found in her office, sipping from her coffee as she looked over the newest medical journal on her computer screen. He noticed that her shoulders were shrugged and that, hiding it as best as she could, her breathing was slightly erratic. "Hey, Gunny." He knocked at her door, but she refused to acknowledge him. "Singer!" Only at that did her head lift a little. She looked over her shoulder to glance at him through the corner of her eyes before darting back to the screen. "What's going on?" He placed his coffee down for a moment and waited for her to talk. Still, she was silent. Gibbs had had enough. He stalked over to her and made her look at him, and that when he saw the dead look in her eyes, the utter lack of emotion. She was utterly destroyed.

"He's gone, Jethro." That was the first time that she had called him by his name. He looked down at her little desk and saw that the photo of the men that she claimed were her brothers and father was covered. He looked back up at her face.

"What?"

"He's dead, Gibbs." She tried to push him away for a moment, but he simply stood there. "Dean's dead." Her lip curled as she tried not to cry in front of her boss. "Please go away, Gibbs."

"Jacklyn." He was shorter than her, but she refused to let herself come any closer to him. "It's okay."

She shook her head at him, not believing what she was hearing. "You have no idea what happened to him, Gibbs. I watched, helpless, as he was torn to pieces. This is all that's left of him!" She shown him the ring that she had slid on top of her own. "He's gone!" Gibbs just stood there as she took in a shaky breath, closing her eyes for a moment before looking at him in a challenge, daring him to try something else. "I said 'leave', Gibbs."

He watched as she suddenly crumpled to the floor, her disciplined composure broken into a thousand little pieces. He knelt next to her, gathering her up in his arms and rocking her gently as she grabbed onto his shirt for dear life. DiNozzo chose that moment to barge in. "Hey, boss. We got a…" He did a double take, looking at their hard-core medic sobbing on the cold floor, "new case?"

"Later, Tony." DiNozzo didn't need to be told twice. He ran away from the medical room as quick as he could, probably to run and tell the others what he had unwittingly witnessed. Gibbs helped her onto the cot and just let her sob there. Every cry she took, every scream she suppressed, it was like re-living the times when his Kelly and Shannon were taken from him. Only this time, there was no drug dealer for him to snipe away and avenge his family. This time, there was nothing he could do to make this any better.


	7. Chapter 7

Jack was quiet for the next week, never letting herself show her tears like that, not in private and not in front of co-workers. She locked them all away, trying her damnedest not to think of Dean, or of his blood coating her came in. As soon as she heard the news, Abby rushed in and and took her best friend and sister-figure out for drinks. Gibbs and the Director both said nothing. Of that hive-mind that seemed to run between the two of them, they knew that she was like a wounded dog: best left alone until she was ready to deal with it. Director Shepard even offered her time off to grieve, but she politely declined the offer; her response was that work was the only thing keeping her sane right now.

Tony was his usual crude self, questioning and probing, until Jack came back to the gym for a workout. For the first time, he saw both the scars on her leg from her injuries that brought her to NCIS in crutches and some of her tattoos, as she strode onto the mat in shorts and a tank top. Gibbs invited her to join them for his fighting exercises, and she schooled them all; even Gibbs landed on the mat to everyone's shock. But still, nothing made her smile.

Tim tried to help her out, but she ended up locking him out of the medical office just to get some peace from all of the self-help psycho-babble. Ziva knew to leave her alone from her personal dealings with Ari and Tali, and the scars that those had left on her as well. Only Ducky was really helping her. He let her talk about nonsensical things as he and Palmer performed autopsies, letting her combat the heart ache in her own way. Sometimes, he even let her sleep in one of the morgue drawers when she couldn't go home, but that was rare.

Finally, three weeks after Dean's death, Jack had an idea. She ran down to Abby's lab with a question. "Abs, who's your tattoo artist here in DC?" Abby looked at her with confusion before seeing a sheet of paper in her hand.

"I'll give you his address. Why?" She stepped away from her beloved Major Mass Spec and looked at Jack. For the first time in a month, she was almost smiling. No grief was in her eyes, no sorrow. What was with the sudden transformation?

"How's his script? Does he do good cursive?"

"Yeah. What's going on, Jack?"

Clearing her throat, she revealed the design in her hands. It was a list of names, but names that both of the girls were familiar with. Abby went into tears when she saw her uncle's name alongside Bobby Singer. All three of the Winchesters were there, alongside Bill and Ellen Harvelle, Caleb Reeves, Pastor Jim Murphy, Missouri Moseley, Daniel Elkins, and Rufus Turner. "It's a list of everyone that's trained me, Abby. All the hunters that helped me become who I am. I want to remember them all." It didn't escape Abby's attention that she brushed her fingers against Dean's name.

"When, Jack? When do you want it done?" She sipped at the Caf-Pow by her hand, hiding the tears that threatened her cool; it was beyond impressive that Jack would do something like this. Most hunters wanted to be forgotten, but this ensured that their legacy lived on.

"This weekend, Abby. I'll give him a call." Jack looked at her before swiping a drink of her Caf-Pow. "Ugh! How can you drink this?"

"Easily." Abby smiled and hugged Jack. "It's good to have you back, Jack." Gibbs found them like that when he came to check up on Abby. He said nothing, just watched as the process began for his medical officer's healing. She had been only a part of his team for four months now, but in that two months, she had grown on him, and it had concerned him when she had grieved like that. He smiled; whatever had gotten her to smile once again, good for her.

* * *

That Saturday, Jack stopped by the shop with Abby in tow. This guy was a friend of Abby's, but that didn't mean that he was going to do the piece for her. The shop was brightly lit with three artists working on people. One wasn't busy at all, working the desk. When the door bell rang as the door opened into the shop, he looked up and smiled when he saw Abby walked in. "Hey, beautiful. Want a new piece already?"

"No, Matt." She went up and hugged him. "This is Jack. She's the one who wants the piece." Jack moved forward and explained her idea. "I want it on my lower back, centered on my spine. Black ink, please, with plain lettering for the names. Can you do it?"

"Sure. Give me half to draw it up. Lift up your shirt and turn around." He measured out the specified area and headed back into the inner workings of the shop. It took him the half hour, but he came and bade her strip off the shirt and stand still. He positioned the art and made her look in the mirror to give the okay. When she was satisfied, she laid belly-down on the artist's table and let him work. He saw the cross between her shoulders and looked up at Abby. "So, Jack. What's it you do?"

"I'm a Marine, Matt." She cradled her head in her arms, turning it to one side to look into the mirror as he worked. The initial sting of the needle made her hiss but she soon zoned out. "I work at NCIS now, as a medical officer."

"Nice. What's your rank?" She looked at him, wondering at the interrogation. "Not many Marines come down to this shop. It's nice to hear some scuttlebutt once in a while."

"Matt, sorry to disappoint, but I don't got that much to share with you. Been ashore for the last two months. Before that, I was in Iraq for six years." Matt sobered up immediately. He was handling a war veteran.

"So, Jack... what are the names? Who are they?" Knowing that this would come up, Jack already had an answer.

"They're my friends. A couple of them have died, and I want to remember them." She remained tight-lipped after that, just letting Matt do his work.

It took him an hour, but it was a memorial worthy of the hunters whose names were written on it. Jack looked at it, nodded as Abby cried behind her, and then paid up Matt. He taped her up, gave her the after-care instructions and the ointment for it. She left the shop, a tearing Abby in tow, and headed back to her house. It was later that night when she finally got a good look at Matt's work without Abby crying at the sight of the names.

It was perfect. Her name began the list, centered and written right across the bony parts of her her spine. Underneath that was the names of her dad and Abby's uncle, Greg Sciuto, the start of two columns on either side of her spinal column. On one side were the names Bobby Singer, Bill Harvelle, Caleb Reeves, Missouri Mosely, John Winchester, and Sam Winchester. The other column had the names Greg Scuito, Ellen Harvelle, Rufus Turner, Pastor Jim Murphy, Dean Winchester, and Daniel Elkins Next to the names of John Winchester, Caleb Reeves, Pastor Jim Murphy, Daniel Elkins, Bill Harvelle, and Dean Winchester were the initials KIA, or 'killed in action'. Indeed, it was a memorial worthy of the hunters that raised her.

She went to sleep, her tears soaking the pillow as she remembered the hunters that trained her, the ones that killed for her, the ones that died for her. For all that hunters were mostly solitary, they were a family. But that family was slowly dying. When would those letters turn up next to her name?

* * *

It was two months after Dean had died, four months after she was hired on with NCIS, but Jacklyn was trying her damnedest to get better. Gibbs and Director Shepard were a great help, keeping her busy. Director Shepard, seeing the good work that she was doing, extended her duties to the rest of the tactical teams in NCIS. It just meant more tests to run, but she was on her feet, keeping busy and keeping her mind off of him.

Abby was the other person trying to help her out of her slump. Bars, clubs, bookstores: whatever took Jack's mind off hunting and off the Winchester. But Abby wasn't a hunter, and she wouldn't understand. When she had the time and the research to back up the hunts, Jack took some of the jobs around the DC-Virginia-Maryland area because they reminded her of what she was.

Gibbs offered her a place teaching DiNozzo and McGee how to fight properly. That was fun, most definitely. When she showed up in a pair of track pants and a workout bra, showing off both the scars and her tattoos, Tony tried to be coy when he asked her about the names. She, in turn, slammed her fist into his gut and told her that the names were her family, her brothers and her fathers who helped raise her. That raised questions that some she answered. When asked about the KIAs, she told them that they had died in hunting accidents: bears and wolves gone after them. Kind of the truth, but not really. They didn't need to know more, besides how she was able to fight as she had been fighting since she was four years old, old enough to understand that something bad had taken over her mother, and that if her father hadn't killed her, then the bad thing would've hurt her. Still, watching Tony do his pathetic attempts at boxing was just awful. McGee showed promise, if only he didn't cower every time she hit him. Ziva was a nice match, but she was still frustrated when Jack beat her every time. Only Gibbs showed any challenge, beating her occasionally.

On one of her days where not a lot was going on, she remembered the first time that she met John Winchester, the hunter of the Yellow-Eyed Demon.

* * *

_She was ten years old, sitting at the kitchen table and going through her homework from history class. It was really easy stuff, but she had to complete it before Dad would allow her more fighting lessons with Uncle Caleb. She was lucky in that Dad had decided to stay home for a little while and teach her some more things. It was nice of him, but she had been taking care of herself since she was four. She was a big girl now. She even had her own guns that Dad had given her at Christmas time: a Glock 37 and her very own sawed-off. He watched her made the cartridges, pouring out the silver bullets and measuring out the salt exactly to his measurements. Like she said, she was a big girl now._

_There was a knock on the door, three rapid beats against the wood. But she wasn't expecting company; she had no friends in school that would have wanted to come over to play. Immediately, her hand went to her back and the handle of her Glock. She quietly sneaked to the front door and asked through the door. "Who's there?"_

_It was a man's deep voice that replied. "John Winchester. Pastor Jim gave me this address?" She knew Pastor Jim and could trust him, but she didn't know a John Winchester. She slowly opened the door and peered up at the man standing in front of her. He was maybe thirty years old, black beard and hair with tired looking eyes. _

_She released her grip on her gun, deciding to try out something that her dad had told her to try. "If Pastor Jim sent you, say the Pater Noster." No demon she knew of could stand Latin, let alone could speak it. He did, however. His Latin needed some work, but he passed the first test. So, she invited him inside._

_"What do you want, mister?" She hid her gun back in her belt, just like Uncle Daniel showed her. _

_"I'm looking for Bobby Singer." He looked out the door and saw a nice-looking Impala sitting out front. There were two boys sitting in the back, waiting to be invited in._

_"What for?" She placed her fists on her hips, sizing up the giant of the man in front of her. _

_"Pastor Jim sent me here, said Bobby could teach me?" He looked sad, so she invited him into the kitchen for a beer. Like her dad showed her to do, she opened up the beer and slipped some holy water into it before pouring herself some apple juice. She slid the beer to the man as he sat down beside her._

_"He'll be home soon." Dad always tried to be home around four o'clock when he wasn't on a job so that he could teach her some more. That meant she had fifteen minutes to finish her homework._

_The man, John, seemed uncomfortable in the kitchen, so he tried to talk to her. "So, what's your name?"_

_"Jack." John started a bit as he got a closer look at the kid in front of him. Golden-brown hair was braided tightly from her head. Silver earrings, little studs, were in her ears. Her hazel greens took in the homework in front of her with a determination. Her clothes and face were clean, except for the cut on her cheek (dumb poltergeist, sneaking up on her like that). "Jack Singer. Bobby's my dad." Smiling as she finished the last question, she pushed her homework aside and looked up at John. _

_John was in shock when he heard that. Bobby had a kid? Pastor Jim didn't share that info. But he didn't have time to ask more questions when he heard the roaring of engines coming into the front yard. The kid looked out the window, grinned wide as only a kid could, and ran out the front yard. _

_"Daddy!" She ran into her dad and hugged him tight around his waist. "I missed you!" She felt her dad ruffle her hair and chuckle as she let him go. Another car, a black Mazda, stopped as the driver hopped out of the car. "Uncle Caleb!" The new man laughed as he launched her in the air, making her giggle. His black hair was shaved into a buzz-cut, his arms strong as he lifted her into the air._

_"Daddy, someone's here for you." Bobby looked at her funny, and she pointed to the man now standing on his front porch, holding the neck of the beer bottle as he nursed it. "Calls himself John Winchester; said that the Pastor sent him our way." Bobby picked her up and walked her over to the man._

_"John, good to see you." He stole a look at the Impala. "Those yer boys?" John nodded. "Jack, go get them." She walked over and let the boys out, pointing them into the house. "Good, now come in." He headed into the kitchen and saw the schoolbooks. "Jacklyn Marie! Clean up yer mess!" _

_"Yes, sir!" She ran quickly, not wanting to upset Dad. She really wanted those fighting lessons with Uncle Caleb. John saw her run up the stairs and down again quickly and quietly. Bobby grinned, quizzed her on her day's work, and then set her loose with Caleb in the back. _

_Over the next two weeks, John stayed with them, him and his boys both. Jack didn't really pay attention to him as they watched her train with Caleb. She was a quick learner, taking down Caleb a couple of times before moving on to target practice. She went off to school in the day, heading out on the bus that stopped a mile away from her room. Every night, she worked on her Latin and Sumerian, drawing out the sigils and seals over and over until her father gave her the okay to write them out in her journals. Caleb gave her a new exercise schedule now that she was sprouting again: more running than weight-lifting. Sometimes, the older Winchester brother asked her questions, but she told him to go and look it up. She had no time for little kids. _

_When the two weeks ended, even she had shown the new hunter a few things: how to sneak, how to run quietly, how to find whatever you were looking for. Maybe he already knew it, but he humored her. John Winchester... maybe he would come and visit again._

_

* * *

_John did come back to visit after that, over the years. Until she was twenty, she kept in close contact with him, always inquiring after his hunts. That was when John did something stupid and Dad told him that if he showed up again, he would fill him with buckshot; she never did find out what John did to piss Bobby off like that. But then she moved away to Chesapeake, wanting her own life. Bobby let her without even an argument, knowing that she knew how to be careful. But now...

She rubbed the rings on her hands, remembering the annoying little Winchester boy that followed her around. Man, she missed Dean. But now, she would always remember him.


	8. Chapter 8

Jack was talking with Gibbs up by his desk, sipping at their coffee, when the mail run came in. Tony was goofing around again with Ziva, making fun of something that she had told him. McGee was typing away at his computer when the mail landed on his desk. Like he normally did, he got up and began to hand out the mail. Two of the letters were for DiNozzo: probably love letters from his many dalliances. None for Ziva and McGee. A couple of bills for Gibbs, and an unaddressed letter for Jack.

Tony tried to grab it from her, but she took him down without even putting down her coffee. "Nice try, Tony." She chuckled as she took out her Swiss Army knife and began to open it up. Opening up one side of the envelope, she blew into the envelope to open it up. But something happened that no one expected. A fine white powder came out of the envelope, spraying itself into her face. Silence hit the bullpen as she looked up at them, horrified surprise on her face.

McGee was the one to speak first. "Not again!"

Looking in horror at her as she began to walk slowly to the nearest garbage can and kneel beside it, Gibbs hopped on his desk. "We have released a bio-hazardous contagion. Initiate protocol. You know the drill." He tossed a water bottle at her that she caught one-handed. Placing the letter on the ground by Tony's desk, she opened the bottle and began to wash off the powder as best as she could from her hand and her face.

She didn't stop, just walked calmly down to the shower room when she heard the fans shut off. McGee didn't need to cite protocol to her: she knew the drill. For the next few hours, her clothes and her weapons were to be confiscated, her clothes burned, herself scrubbed down in the showers, and then she would head down to Autopsy for blood taking by Ducky. Then she would be shipped off to Bethesda, where she would become their human pincushion, in Tony's words at least. Observation until the CDC knew what they were dealing with. Then, hopefully treatment. She'd really hate to die on the job so soon into this.

She didn't want to listen to Tony's stories. Apparently, this had happened before. Several years ago, Tony had gotten infected with pneumonic plague in a letter. He and an deceased agent had to spend the night in Bethesda together. At least she was lucky: she didn't have to spend the night with the womanizer. She was the only one infected. So it was into the incinerator with her clothes. There was nothing special about them, but she convinced the men from the CDC to spare her knives and her little silver pentacle, as well as her wallet and her keys. Those were gifts from her father, the Swiss Army knife from Caleb. It was all she had of his. She paid them a Benjamin and they tucked them into a biohazard bag for decontamination. She would get them later, if this thing was ever solved.

"So, Jack..." She rolled her eyes; again with the questions and the stories. Would Tony ever shut up?

"What, DiNozzo?" She used the scrubber that they had supplied her and began to rub down with the strongest soap they had.

"How many tattoos do you really have?" She didn't answer, didn't want to. "Come on, Jack." Now he had commenced with the whining. She might as well oblige him.

"Seven. Less than Abby." She rubbed the sponge over the two pentacles on her shoulder.

"What, not gonna tell us what they mean?"

"Nope." It was only a few moments when she heard him suck in air. "DiNozzo, not in the mood. If you want to be permanently paralyzed for the rest of your life, just keep on talking." At least McGee and Ziva were quiet. Gibbs was just washing up. They could feel the anger, the tension in the air. Everyone got it, except Tony.

"Come on, Jack. I'm your friend, right?" Now, he began to sound worried. He peered out of the shower to look at her with his pleading eyes.

"Tony, if you continue talking, you will be my paralyzed friend, got it?" By her tone, Tony finally got that she wasn't kidding. There was no need for her to lie. She always kept her word, as well. Finally, he shut up. Opportune timing, since the showers turned off. More bio-hazard guys came in and gave them some scrubs. Wearing their own little air masks, they were escorted down to Autopsy; it was equipped with negative pressure, making it safe for airborne infectious contamination.

Ducky was suited up as well, his face sober as Jack lifted up her sleeve and let him collect two vials of her blood. Everyone else looked at her funnily, like they were expecting her to explode as Palmer drew one vial each from the others. Ducky rubbed a gloved hand over her forearm. "I'm sorry, Jacklyn."

"Not your fault, Duck." She was calm again. Gibbs looked at her with a strange look on her face, but he nodded his head as the CDC men came to collect her. "It's not your fault."

* * *

She stretched out on the bed in the basement isolation unit, letting the drugs work their magic on her body. She still had no idea what she was infected with. Could be anything. The ideas going through her head at this point were not pretty, none of them. The doctor checked in on her. He was trying to be humorous, saying that his name was Dr. Gabriel Byrne. That was one of her favorite actors, but it wasn't funny now. He first gave her the antibiotic streptomycin orally, but now he hooked her up with an IV to make the medications work better. He and the nurses that occasionally checked up and constantly monitored her all wore masks and gloves to protect them from her.

What the hell was wrong with her? Why was no one speaking to her about this? She was going to go stir-crazy. This went against all of her instincts as a hunter and as a Marine, just sitting there and taking the punches. She needed to do something, but what could she do but wait?

* * *

Abby was working her magic in the lab, trying her best to figure out what the hell was going on. I mean, when this happened to Tony, she was upset, but she was able to work. But this was Jack. This was her kid-hood friend. When she wasn't overseas, she was able to call her and catch up. Albeit, she couldn't leave work to hang out, but they were still close. Man, she was bloody frantic!

The envelope and its contents were in an airtight container, vacuumed sealed. She had taken out the letter from the envelope and had read it at last. It wasn't good. She made a transcript of the letter and made to run off to tell Jack when Gibbs came online over the plasma. "Abs? What's going on?" Tony, Tim, and Ziva came on screen as well.

"You're still down there, Gibbs?" She smiled for a bit, trying to make light of the situation. "Didn't try to break out like before?" She chuckled quietly as Gibbs began to pace.

"How's Jack?" Abby's face totally disintegrated when he asked that question. Gibbs was worried, and he was scary when he was worried.

"Well, she doesn't have plague, that's for sure." Her phone was ringing; maybe it was him... "Gibbs, when I know more, you'll know more. I promise." She turned off the plasma monitor for a moment before picking up the phone.

"_Abby?_" It was him.

"Uncle Bobby?" Abby all but broke down. "It's Jack. She's in trouble."

_"What she do now?"_ On the other end of the line, Bobby sat down heavily in a chair. He had just lost a son in Dean; he was not going to lose his daughter.

"She's infected with something supernatural. She needs a full exorcism." Abby began to blab over the phone. "She opened an letter and something white came out of it. The letter read that she's possessed, Bobby. Jack's possessed."At once, Bobby calmed down.

_"Abby, she's protected. She's got two anti-possession pentacles and a devil's trap tattooed on her. Nothing can get inside of her."_ He made to hang up but Abby said the word that made him stop.

"Bobby, she's got Croatoan." Bobby stood up and made for his car. "The letter said that she's possessed with the Croatoan virus."

_"Abby, where is she?"_ Abby was mimicking him on the other side of the line.

"She's at Bethesda. She has to stay there for at least overnight."

_"Okay, I'll be there in there in a few hours. Tell the doctors that she needs to be restrained. No blood on blood contact. I'll meet you at your work."_ Bobby paused for a minute. "_You did good, Abs."_ They both hung up, and Bobby picked the fastest car in his yard to get to the airport.

* * *

Dr. Byrne got off the phone with a Ms. Abigail Sciuto, who begged him to put his patient Gunnery Sergeant Jacklyn Singer in full body restraints and in complete isolation. No one could get to her. It wasn't standard protocol, but when sulfur had shown up in her preliminary blood tests, he didn't know what to think. So until he knew better, he listened to Ms. Sciuto and placed his patient under full body restraints.

She was deep asleep, so she didn't fight them as the security detail doubled over the containment unit. According to Ms. Sciuto's wishes, she was not allowed any physical human contact. He could come into the room with her, but he couldn't touch her.

This was going to need some explanation.

* * *

Bobby rushed to the Naval Criminal Investigation Services building once he landed in Washington five hours later. It was luck of the gods that his flight was just starting the call to board when he made it through the security measures. Once he landed in Denver, his next flight was calling to board as well. It was perfect timing...

He showed his driver's license and his fraudulent CDC credentials to the people at the front gate and they left him through down the stairs to Autopsy. There was no need for disguise, since Abby was waiting for him outside of the doors. "Uncle Bobby!" Damn, she had sprouted since he had last seen her almost fifteen years ago. "You came!" She rushed into his arms and hugged him tightly; he felt some tears on his shoulder as she wept.

"Well, you needed help." He pushed her away and pointed to the glass doors. "This her team?" Abby nodded. "Do they know?" At that, she shook her head. "Well, let's try and keep it that way for now." From his wallet, he pulled out his fake CDC ID card, pinning it to his flannel shirt. "Abby, did you see their blood?"

She nodded. "None of them have sulfur in them. I checked every fifteen minutes for four hours. They're clean."

Bobby looked at the four inside. "Good, then you can release them. They don't got it." Abby pushed open the doors to Autopsy, letting the team leave. Bobby looked at them all before nodding his head, taking on his act. "Robert Wisdom, CDC. Well, your blood tests are all negative of any and all diseases. You're free to go."

He made to leave, but a silver-haired man held him back. "What about Jack?"

Bobby straightened out his shirt. "Jacklyn Singer, however, is infected."

The man looked at him, a glare on his face. "With what?"

Bobby used the standard answer for that. "I'm sorry, sir, but that's classified."

A younger man, Italian by the looks of him, stepped forward and slammed him against the wall. "That's not good enough! This is Jack we're talking about."

Bobby lost it. "You idjit! I'm here to make her better! Now hands off, or I'll fill yer ass with buckshot!" He and Abby left the team standing there; Jack was running out of time...

* * *

When Bobby burst in and saw his daughter there, his heart near almost stopped. Abby followed his orders to the letters, but that was his little girl there. Her ankles, knees, waist, chest, and wrists were bolted down to the bed with hard leather restraints. She was shaking a little, fighting with the restraints that held her down. Her face was grimaced, almost feral. The noises coming from her made her seem more like a caged animal, which in a way she might become.

It was a little known fact, but the Croatoan virus can be cured. It involved making the demon virus into a corporeal form, and then exorcising it from the victim. However simplistic it sounded, it was a freakishly long ritual and extraordinary painful to the person; very few people made it through alive. But he had to try it out. I mean, this was his daughter. He would do anything if it meant that she have a chance to be cured of this.

"I'm sorry, sir, but you can't be here." A doctor in a white coat came up to him and placed a hand on his chest. "This patient is complete isolation. No human contact."

"I know that." Bobby resisted saying 'you idjit' as he flashed his badge. "I'm going to need all your men to leave, Dr... Byrne."

When he tried to protest, Bobby gave him a glare of his own. "Sir, I have orders from NCIS to go in there and be alone with the patient for two hours." Thank God for Abby and her ability to forge documents in a snap. "Now, please. Leave." The doctor looked over his shoulder at the patient, and sighed before leaving the room.

Bobby whispered into the mic that Abby gave him, situated on the inside his collar. "Okay, Abby. Do yer magic. Now, two hours, sweetheart."

_"Roger that, Unc._" Bobby waited until he saw the cameras turn off before walking towards his daughter strapped there to the bed.

"Da... Dad?" Her vision was blurry, her mouth dry despite the IV fluids. "Wh... what are you doing here?"

"Here to make you better." He pulled the bed next to her closer, placing his tools on it. He looked over to Jacklyn, trying to look over at her face. "You got Croatoan, Jack."

Her eyes widened before slumping against the bed. "Just kill me then, Dad. You can't fix this, not this time."

Bobby head-slapped her, making her a little more alert. "Ye idjit. There is a way, but its gonna hurt. A lot." Jacklyn looked at him before nodding.

"Do it."

* * *

His two hours were almost up, but he was just about finished. Jacklyn had fought hard; oh man, she had fought hard. Her eyes transitioned between her normal hazel to red to white to black to gold as she screamed at him. Her wrists and ankles were bloody from her fight with the restraints. He swallowed back the bile as he kept reading the incantation, kept making her drink the holy water and eating the rock salt, kept taking a little bit of her blood and placing it in the bowl with the rest of the stuff. All the while, he tried his best to keep a distance from her so that she couldn't give him the disease too.

There was just one thing left to down. It was a standard exorcism, one he had performed many times. "_Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica, in nomine et virtute Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, eradicare et effugare a Dei Ecclesia, ab animabus ad imaginem Dei conditis ac pretioso divini Agni sanguine redemptis."_ As he did so, the black smoke began to come out of her mouth; well, more like shoot out of it.

It was finished. Jacklyn gave a great gasp before looking around. "Daddy?" She tried to reach out for him. "Dad?" Bobby was crying a little bit as he kissed her cheek before packing up and leaving, just as his two hours were almost completed. He encountered the doctor waiting outside as Abby spoke through the mic that she was turning back on all electronic feeds. "Test her blood now."

Without even an explanation, he left, headed back to South Dakota.

* * *

Gibbs was pissed. Everyone saw it on his face when it was time for Jack to return to work. Somehow, she was completed cured. Completely cured of what? Who the hell was Robert Wisdom, anyway? There was no record of him in the CDC database; he had McGee double-check it, twice. Jack didn't come to see him at all for the next two weeks, opting to stay down in her office as was her wont. So Gibbs, coffee in hand, walked into her office. He found her sleeping on the cot, a book trapped under one of her hands. Placing the cup aside, he gently took the book from her and began to read.

He couldn't believe what he was reading. Demons? Werewolves? On and on, for the entire journal, it went on a similar vein. At the very end of the book was an entry for something called 'Croatoan'. What the hell? Gibbs didn't know that she was awake, didn't know that she was looking at him. "Well, now you know." Gibbs started when he heard her. "Welcome to the real war, Jethro."

* * *

"What, you think this is new to me, Jack?" Gibbs lifted up his shirt to reveal a massive scar running from shoulder to hip. "Some thing when I was in Kuwait came after me. Did this to me." He motioned to the journal between them. "Had black eyes. When it was finished, black smoke came out his mouth. Never told anyone; figured I was probably seeing things."

Jack nodded her head as she pulled out a bottle of Jack's from her supply cupboard and two glasses, poured them each a finger's width. "That was a possessed human, Gibbs. Demon got inside, rides your skin for as long as it wants." She proffered one of the glasses to him. "I know that you like bourbon, but Jack's all I got."

They were silent, just drinking as Gibbs looked through the journal again. "So what, when'd you find out?"

"When I was three years and seven weeks old." She sat on the bed, her back resting against the wall. "Demon possessed my mother. My dad figured it out, killed her." She poured herself another drink, three fingers this time. "Been doing this all my life, Gibbs. Shooting, fighting, learning. I was a hunter long before I was a Marine." She sat down heavily on the bed. "So many people that I've known, now are dead."

It only took Gibbs a few seconds to come to the right conclusion. "The names on your back..."

She nodded. "Hunters, all of them."

Gibbs cocked an eyebrow. "Abby's uncle?"

"Yep." She looked at them through her scarred eye. "He's one of the lucky ones. Retired now, like my dad. They're not active hunters, not anymore."

Gibbs pulled up a stool and sat across from her. "What about the others?"

Jack placed the whiskey glass on the sink and rubbed her face. "Caleb Reeves, Pastor Jim Murphy, Bill Harvelle, and John Winchester were all killed by demons. Daniel Elkins was killed by vampires. Dean..." Her voice cracked for a moment. "Dean was taken two months and two weeks ago by Hellhounds, because he made a crossroads deal." Gibbs looked confused, so she elaborated, dumbing it down as best she could. "If you go to a crossroads and make a deal, Hellhounds come at the end of the deal and take you down to Hell as payment. Dean made the deal for his brother, to bring back Sam."

Gibbs didn't want to accept this, so he made her keep talking. "Who are the people?"

She leaned against the wall, remembering her childhood mentors. "My dad and Greg Sciuto were family; Abby and I would stay at each other's houses when our dads went hunting. Dad always made me do my homework before he would let me start studying the supernatural. Bill and Ellen Harvelle used to run the Roadhouse together; it's a hunter tavern in Nebraska. Bill died protecting John Winchester from devil spawn; he was a great guy, but I never got to know him very well. Still, he and Ellen were my first contacts in the hunter community." She took a breath. "John Winchester died two years ago protecting his sons from a demon, the same one that killed his wife. I met him when I was ten, and I was his mentor on demonology. He and his sons used to trail me in the junkyard while I was training. It was actually annoying, kind of. Didn't actually remember Dean and Sam until I met up with them at JFK three months ago, and then the memories clicked in place.

"Caleb Reeves, Dan Elkins, and Pastor Jim Murphy were my teachers. Caleb taught me martial arts, the fighting that I cream your team with. He died two years ago; demon caught him, tortured him." She reached into her back pocket and took out the Swiss Army knife. "This was his; he gave it to me when I moved to Chesapeake. Said it was a reminder to always protect myself." She chuckled a bit. "Pastor Jim taught me everything that I knew about hunting that I didn't learn from the tomes and books I memorized. He was tortured by the same demon that killed Uncle Caleb." She chuckled a bit more at the old childhood name for her best friend. "Dan Elkin's specialty was vampires. He was killed by them, eventually. Also two years ago." She remembered the letter that Bobby sent her near the end of her fourth tour, telling her that. If it weren't for her unit, she would have gone AWOL to hunt down the demon herself.

"Missouri Mosely is the best damn psychic in Kansas. She was kind of like the mother figure in my life. I used to spend my summers with her until I was thirteen, learning exorcism rituals and symbology. She could whap me upside the head faster than you do Tony, but she never hit me out of malice. It was always simply to enforce a lesson. Rufus is a long-retired hunter. He and Dad wrote letters when Dad was starting out, directing him on how and where to start." She rubbed the pentacle on her left shoulder, trying to rub out the tension building up there.

Again, they were silent for a while. Gibbs was trying to take this all in. Jack looked at him, knowing full well what it was like. "I know: lot to take in. Probably think that I'm nuts, right? That it's impossible for this to be happening. Or how could you not have known about this?" She sighed and drank some more. "Trust me, I feel that way almost every day." She pulled something from out of her jean pocket. "Here." Gibbs saw that it was a necklace of some sorts. It was silver, but the symbol was the same as one of Jack's tats.

"Pentacle, Gibbs. Protects you from being possessed. You wear one of those, and you're safe from demons. The silver's for werewolves if they get near you." She stood up and opened the door, revealing Abby as she tried to run away from her sneaking around. "You do know, Abs, that it's impossible to sneak around a Marine, right?"

"Well, yeah, Jacky. Gibbs always sneaks by me, but I can't get the jump on him." Abs gave her a hug before pouncing on Gibbs. "Got a lead on a case that we received this morning. The bullets match."

"Abs, talk shop outside of my office, please?" Jack escorted them both out before drinking another glass and curling back on her bed. She was still weak from her near-bout with Croatoan virus, but she only needed three more hours of sleep and she would be good to go. Gibbs would come back later with more questions. He knew where to find her.


	9. Chapter 9

It was three weeks after her face-off with the Croatoan virus, and Jack was back hard at work. Gibbs only saw her in the mornings and at the end of shift when she drove in on that motorcycle of hers. She tried to smile around the team, but somehow her efforts seemed hollow, as if she wasn't trying hard enough. Ducky barely even saw her, for she locked herself away in her office and kept to herself. Only Abby got anything close to resembling progress. She came by and visited her friend, always talking and trying to get her to open up. But Jack just kept busy, almost ignoring Abby and shutting herself away.

Finally, Gibbs had enough. Coffee in hand, he stalked down to the clinic and saw the papers in her shaking hands as she stared blankly at them. From where he was standing, Gibbs could have sworn that they looked like service records.

"One week ago, I lost three of my friends, Boss." That was the first time she ever called Gibbs that. He was worried when she stood up and proffered the papers for his inspections. "They were re-deployed without me, Gibbs, because I can't be stop-lost. Because I'm not active." There was anger in her voice, but also great sadness.

Gibbs read the names. "Sergeant Rondo; Corporal Smith; Sergeant Wickshire... killed in action."

"They were re-deployed two weeks after we got back. Around the time that Damon was here. Their..." As she exhaled, her breath was shaky, but she kept it together. "Their bodies are being returned tomorrow, Gibbs." She stood straighter, that ever-present Marine stoicism on her face. "Permission to attend the funeral, sir?"

Gibbs nodded his head. As he left, he could have swore that she said, "Happy birthday, Singer."

* * *

The team attended the procession with her at the landing strip, standing at the forefront of the gathering crowds as she helped to carry the coffins of her friends off of the C-17 and into the provided hearses for the funeral service. They had only seen her in her full dress uniform once before; in fact, only Ziva and Gibbs had seen her before in her dress blues. Tony, McGee, Abby, and Ducky all watched through stony gazes as their friend's face was blank as she helped shoulder each burden without a complaint.

The cars left immediately for St. Matthew's Cathedral for a joint funeral. It was the request of the families that their fallen family members be buried as quickly as possible, in order to place their fathers and husbands at rest and peace. The massive cathedral was filled to the rafters with people. Jack stood as a member of the honor-guard at the front of the church, watching over her friends as their families said their final goodbyes. Abby sobbed out loud as Corporal Smith's two teenage sons tearily saluted their father's coffin and helped their distraught mother back to their seats. Jack spoke not a word out of turn, but when it came to her to deliver the eulogy, a single tear crawled down her face; it was barely noticeable underneath the shadow of her cover.

"Honor... duty... discipline... loyalty. These are drilled into the minds of every Marine as we trained and become what we are meant to be. Sergeant Matthew Rondo, Corporal Malichai Smith, and Sergeant Seamus Wickshire exemplified such values every day of their service to the Corps and to this nation. They were the type of Marine that is rare nowadays: ones that fight not because we are ordered to, but because they believed in our cause, this fight. Now that they are gone, it is up to the rest of us, their comrades, friends, and family, to honor their memories and continue fighting, the way that they all wanted us to." She stepped down from the podium and saluted their hearses, her stare slightly hidden from the congregation as she looked down at the flags covering their coffins. "_Semper fi_, gentlemen. We will never forget."

The city of Washington DC had stopped that day, everyone coming out to witness the procession. The police department and emergency medical services came out in droves to mourn their own. Smith and Wickshire were a part of their forces respectively, but when 9/11 happened, they joined the enlisting men that came out of the woodwork. Rondo had gone to Parris Island with Jack; he was one of the men that accepted her but he pushed her to be the best. During the two years in between their Graduation and their deployment, he met his wife and the son that she had from a previous marriage, marrying her after two months of dating. He served an initial two-year tour, returned home, and then did another one-year tour.

The NCIS team stood in the massive crowd as Jack stood by Sgt. Rondo's coffin, folding the flag with precise motions and handing it to his wife Amelia. As the crowd dispersed, Amelia collapsed to the ground and it was Jack to catch her, Jack to help walk her back to the car. Thanks to Abby (and her awesome lip-reading skills), they saw her offer help and a shoulder to cry on as long as she needed it.

Yet again, this was another side of their friend that they all witnessed: that of a Gunnery Sergeant feeling responsible for her men. As a Gunny, she saw these men every day when she was serving as long as they were in Iraq. She was the one to turn to, to talk to. Now, those men were dead, yet another statistic in the casualty list, yet another name on the memorials. She never said it, but Gibbs saw that she felt responsible for their fates.

* * *

They returned to NCIS in silence, Jack riding along with Ducky in his Morgan. The entire bullpen was silent as Jack walked through in her full dress blues, her chest displaying the medals and ribbons that she had earned over her career. Her cover was tucked under her arm as she sat on the chair in between Gibbs' and Ziva's desks.

"Well, what next?" Jack looked over to DiNozzo, looking smug with that damned cavalier attitude of his, with a momentary lack of comprehension. He looked at Jack, not understanding her lack of reaction. "Jack, come on. Soldiers die every day; that's war. So, what's next?" He never had a chance to react to her standing and walking over to him, the fist flying in the air that broke his nose and cheekbone. He did feel Jack lift him up in the air by the collar of his suit and the inferno of her glare. She was so fast that not even Ziva had time to react.

"Tony, these men saved my life. I'd be dead without them." Her voice was quiet, but make no mistake, the intensity of the fury in her voice was clear. "So drop the attitude, get on with your job, and don't you dare disrespect my troops again."

Gibbs just stood by and yelled, "Wolf!" At her moniker, Jack dropped DiNozzo to the ground callously and stalked back down to her clinic. Tony was helped up by McGee and Ziva, with Ducky offering to drive him to the hospital. It probably wasn't the best idea to ask Jack to mend him in her current state of mind.

* * *

Later in the day, Jack found herself in front of Director Shepard, dressed now in her utility uniform and standing at ease in front of the desk. There was a form sitting on the desk between them, and Shepard was looking up at the medical officer with a inquiring gaze. Over the last almost two-and-a-half months, Jack had worked above and beyond even the standards of Gibbs to prove herself worthy of her orders. She had never asked for anything for herself: no time off, no sick leave, not even a day off to mourn for her dead lover; not until now, that is. "Gunnery Sergeant Singer, are you sure that you would do this?" Jack stared ahead, standing at ease.

"Yes, ma'am." Director Shepard sighed before signing the orders. She handed the papers over to Jack, seeing that the signatures of her company commander and second-in-command were there as well. "I will expect you back in two months' time." Director Shepard dismissed her, but not before adding something. "Oh, and Jack?" She paused at the doorway, her hand halfway to the doorknob. "What happened earlier today with Special Agent DiNozzo, he was out of line, but that's his way."

Jack sighed. "Ma'am, I understand, but that does not condone the cavalier attitude that he bore towards the Marines that watched my back. I cannot move on with one day's time, especially with previous events. This," she held up the form, "will allow me the proper time to mourn, as well as purge these unhealthy emotions."

Director Shepard nodded. "Good luck, Jack, and come back alive." Jack nodded and left the office, heading down back to her clinic. Gathering up her personals, she locked the door and headed out. She left a note on Gibbs' desk: "_Gone back to train. Be back in two months_."

* * *

The team's personality was quiet for the two months that Jack was MIA, working on their cases. Every once in a while, they would look to the locked door of her clinic as they came in and out of Autopsy and wonder about where she had gone. Director Shepard had refused point blank to disclose any information about hers whereabouts, earning the utmost fury of one Abby Sciuto.

In August on an early morning, Gibbs was walking into the bullpen to see a figure standing over his desk writing something on a piece of paper. The person was dressed in woodland MARPAT and combat boots, a worn mudcloth duffel over her shoulder. He recognized the back of the head as he walked closer to his desk.

"Good morning, Gibbs." It was the same voice as she slowly turned to face him. Jack Singer was back, but what the hell happened to her? He looked at her slowly, taking in the black and swollen eye, the re-set broken nose, the busted lip and eyebrow, to the broken collarbone and the arm in the makeshift sling, to the broken fingers. Her left arm, the one not in the sling, was bandaged up, but he saw the dark red of dried blood running along its length.

"Hey, Doc." She sighed at the nickname, a small smile cracking her face. "Where've you been?"

"Didn't you get my note?" As she turned fully into the bright office light, he saw evidence of multiple ligature bruises around her neck.

"Yeah; kind of vague, though." He placed the coffee on the table and grabbed her chin, getting a better look at her. It was at that moment that the rest of the team exited the elevator and saw their missing medic standing by their boss.

"I was on a training exercise, Gibbs. Hey, McGee, Ziva." She looked over her shoulder. "Tony."

"Jack?" They all dropped their bags by their desks and gathered around. Their shocked faced begged for an explanation.

"SERE training, Beta Level." All but Gibbs continued to look confused. "It stands for, 'survival, evasion, resistance, and escape'. My company commander said that in order for me to move up a rank, I needed to complete it." She shrugged out of her duffel and gently massaged her bummed shoulder. "I passed the training, and just have to send the paperwork to my CO for his consideration."

As she turned and left, they saw that she was favouring her right leg. McGee and Tony turned to Gibbs. "What's SERE, boss?"

Gibbs sipped at his coffee. "Surviving in hostile conditions, evading the enemy, and not giving up information." They were still questions on their faces. "Guys, she was interrogated for information." Finally, it dawned on them.

Their friend was crazy...

* * *

Ducky was leaning over a body that was sent to him from Bethesda Hospital in the wee hours of the morning, getting ready to perform the autopsy when his door opened. He sighed. "Mr. Palmer, if you intend to continue in as my assistant, then I suggest that you obtain a watch."

"Sorry, Ducky." He turned at the sound of Jack's voice and was horrified at her condition. "When I see Palmer, I'll tell him that." He put his scalpel down and walked over to her, making her sit down for an inspection.

"Jacklyn, my dear, you're back!" He looked in her battered face. "What on earth happened?" She sighed just as Gibbs came down and smacked her on the back of the head. Ducky was enraged at his old friend. "Jethro! She may have a concussion!"

"Duck, it's all right. They didn't hit me in the head." She looked up at Gibbs. "You finished yet?"

"No. Tell me why." She looked at him, saw the pentacle's cord still around his neck.

"Because I wanted to move up in the ranks, Gibbs." She leaned back in the chair. "Yes, I'm crazy, loony, out of my mind. But I'm also a career Marine." She began to unroll the bandages from around her arm, revealing a semi-fresh open wound. Someone had tried to pig-stick her but ended up cutting from her wrist to her elbow. "However, I didn't get a choice over the CO of the program; he's a right bastard."

Ducky sat next to her and began to suture the jagged laceration closed. She made no sound, not even when he finished and began to examine her shoulder and face. Gibbs just looked at her, something akin to worry in his eyes. "Just don't ever do that again, Jack. You understand me?"

Jack looked at him out of her good eye. "I understand, Gibbs." She began to sign something that made him smile. "_I missed you guys too much to stay away for long."_


	10. Chapter 10

Jack got to work right after she came back from her SERE training. Abby was quite pissed at her for the longest period of time, both for not telling her anything about where she went for two months, and for coming back in such a mess. It took a while and a lot of Caf-Pows as tribute, but she was forgiven for the judgment error. Come the middle of August, with herself getting back on the mend,Jack had an awesome plan to celebrate with her team.

She was subtle about it: handing out the invitations to the team as part of the routine mail, not mentioning a whole lot about it when they came down to see her. She sent them an email a week before, and then went about her business. Come that Saturday, the team gathered at her house for a barbecue. Even Director Shepard was invited, but she wasn't really expecting the whole team to come... So imagine the shock when everyone invited showed up at her house on the Saturday, holding trophies of beer and salads. Jack smiled and let them into the house. With the exception of Gibbs, this was the first time that anyone had seen the inside of Jack's place. Tony didn't even get inside the house: he was floored by the beautiful and working '52 Camaro in her garage.

"Jack! Is that real?" Tony ran his hands over the chassis, looking over the details with a lovingly knowing eye.

"Yeah, DiNozzo. It's real." She walked over to the garage as the team began to congregate around it. "Don't drool on the leather."

"Did you restore it yourself, Jacklyn?" Ducky smiled at her as she chuckled.

"Yeah. I don't keep those tools on my wall for no reason, Duck." Tony got a look at the tools and gasped in love. "And yes, DiNozzo, my bike's real too. You've seen it!" She ran her hand over the seat of her Yamaha YZF-RA; she had purchased it before she had gone overseas as a little indulgence. It had cost her almost a full year's salary, but it was so worth it. She loved going fast, and the crotch-rocker most definitely provided that.

As they headed into the house, everyone's jaws dropped as they took in the massive collection of bookcases. Director Shepard walked closer, taking in the titles. Before she could ask, Jack answered with, "I've loved mythology since I was a little girl, Director Shepard; call it a tradition in my family. Other girls learned about Barbies and makeup, while I learned Latin and Sumerian to translate these. My dad was strict about my education, insisting that I learn several languages and at least have some level of proficiency..."

They were interrupted by Abby's sob from the other side of the room. Jack nearly unhooked her K-BAR from her belt until she saw that she was crying for joy. "Jack, you found them?"

She smiled and placed a hand on her best friend's shoulder. "Yeah, Abs. I found them." The team looked on in wonder as they gathered around once more. Abby had gasped at... candid photos? It took Ziva less then fifteen seconds to connect the dots and say, "These are the names on your back, Jack?"

She nodded. "Yeah." She pointed out each of the photos, naming them for the benefit of the others; she and Abby knew them all already. They were silent as she passed by a duplicate of the photo with Dean, Sam, and Bobby, placing her fingers on Dean's miniature face as she led them outside.

As she fired up the grill in her backyard, Gibbs pushed her aside in order to enjoy the team scuttlebutt as he tossed the steaks and chicken burgers on the grill. For once, they were friends, not bosses and team members, but just simply friends. But it wasn't to last, because there was a rushed knock on her door. Jack wasn't expecting anyone, so she unhooked her knife holster as she walked into the house and peered out the window. The man waiting for her out front was the last person on earth that she expected to hear from again. Placing her blade back in its holster, she unlocked the door, being careful to not disturb the salt lines hidden discretely under the front carpet. "Sam?"

"Jack." Sam looked better than what her father had given him credit for: at least he didn't smell of liquor anymore. Hell, his clothes were even straight and on the right way! By all of his accounts, Sam had tried every method possible to trade places with Dean, to get him to come back even if he had to go to Hell in his place. Nothing had worked, and so Sam had turned to the drink. He hadn't contacted her in two months, ever since she left for SERE. Before that, he phoned her at five weeks every two weeks, checking in for any new information that could help Dean or kill Lilith. After the first month, she stopped helping him with attempting the crossroads deal: this was unhealthy for the both of them. "I need to talk to you." His voice was quite serious, not his normal puppy-dog self.

"Sure, come in." She looked around to the outside before inviting the hunter in. "Sam, I got guests here, so what do you need?"

"What did Lilith mean when she had us all back in New Harmony? About you learning your lesson?" She sighed and tried so hard not to moan. Why did he have to ask about that?

At that moment, with his normal bad timing, Tony yelled her name. "Jack! Come on: the stuff's ready!" She headed outside back to the team, a small smile on her face. Tony's face narrowed at the sight of Sam in the shadows. "Who's that?" Gibbs turned and looked, not saying anything quite yet.

She groaned internally: this could not be happening! "Everyone, this is my brother-in-arms, Sam Winchester. I taught this kid some of what he knows on hunting game, right Sam?" She looked at him, begging to keep up with the charade

Sam, it seems, was a natural born actor, because he grinned his pearly whites and shook hands with Ziva and Abby. "Yeah, Jack taught me and my brother how to track in the forest. Gotta watch out for the bears and wolves; they're nasty buggers." He grinned at Gibbs before turning serious once more. "Actually, I need to borrow her for a moment. If we can?"

"Yeah, sure!" Gibbs looked at the team, telling them with his eyes to stay seated. "But be quick, all right?"

"No problem, Gibbs." Jack all but pushed Sam back into the house, leading him upstairs to her bedroom for some privacy. "So, you wanna know how I knew Lilith?" Sam leaned against the wall, waiting for his answer. "She was the one to set off the bomb that nearly killed me so close to my last tour's end, Sam. Those were her demon helpers." She rubbed the back of her neck, praying for an easier way to do this. "I was researching into afreets near the region; real old and powerful fire demons. I followed a trail that led me to Lilith, and when she found out, she tried to kill me. That obviously didn't work, 'cause I'm still here."

"Why didn't you tell us that when you first found out Dean had a deal?" Sam's eyes were muted with fury, but he was keeping it cool for now at least.

"Because I didn't know that Lilith held the contract!" She threw her hands in the air and yelled at him. "You Winchesters are all the same! You think that because one of us researchers knows a little something about something, that we know it all! Your dad was the same way with Old Yellow-Eyes! Give me a break, Sam... What was I gonna do? Call my dad from Iraq when I was fresh off the operating table and tell him that I knew that the fire demons in this region were under the aegis of the first demon ever created?" She glared at him.

"Any information would have been helpful, Jack!" Sam was getting mad now, but Jack was much further along than him.

"You got some nerve, Samuel. I didn't know about Dean's deal until I met him. I didn't know anything about Lilith being the holder of crossroad deals until I did more research before Dean's death. So don't you dare think that I didn't do all that I could to save Dean!" She saw the amulet resting on his chest. "You care more about hunting down the thing that killed your brother than moving on with your life! Sam, it's a pipe dream. You can't kill Lilith. Trust me, I've looked. She is the most powerful demon ever. So unless you become a demon, give it up!"

He took the amulet off and tossed it on her bed, surprising her with a jab to her still-healing shoulder. "I'm doing the best I can, Jack! This is what Dad trained me to do! I'm a soldier! I hunt things! So now I hunt the demon that killed Dean, and I'm not gonna stop until she's dead! If you don't want to help me, then just stay out my way!"

Jack cradled her shoulder, her own rage fuelling the fire in her spirit. "Get out." Sam looked down at her. "Get out of my house, Samuel Winchester, before I fill your ass with buckshot." He didn't think that she meant it? She took the shotgun that she kept propped by her door and cocked the hammer. "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" That was when Sam left. She placed the gun by the door and walked back down to the yard. She sat down and nursed her beer, thankful that she had soundproofed her room. The team remained oblivious, for now at least. It was like nothing happened.


	11. Chapter 11

It was the end of the first week in September of 2008. This summer was the most quiet in NCIS history, according to Gibbs. Normally, there would be at least twenty cases; this summer, there were six. The newly minted Master Sergeant Jacklyn Singer was planning to take her first vacation in six years in the form of the medical leave that had piled up in her name. She wanted to take some of it now, before the 'autumn rush of the loonies' began, according to DiNozzo. Cleared already by Director Shepard and even given Gibbs' silent blessing, she had locked up her clinic on the Friday and headed back to her house. Abby came with her for a drink and to talk.

"So, Jack, how are you doing?" Jack paused for a moment as she packed up her clothes on top of the weapons stash that she always carried with her. She thought about her answer before turning back to Abby as she sipped her beer.

"Abs, to be honest... I'm doing better, but I've been better. Who would've thought that after knowing a guy for a month after not seeing him for over a decade, I'd be this torn up about him." She leaned against the side of her bed and nodded her head. "What with my bout with the Croatoan virus, burying my friends, SERE, it's been what I can consider a crappy summer." She tried to laugh, but it came out sounding forced. "But, I got a new job, I've moved up in the ranks, and met some old and new friends. And now, I'm taking my long-awaited vacation."

Abby laughed as she looked over her still-injured friend. By now, her collarbone was mostly healed, but her arm was still in its cast. The bruises and cuts to her face were pretty much healed up, but there would be an awesome scar on her arm as the knife wound there was not quite healed. All in all, she wasn't in the best state to be travelling by herself, but she would be fine for the most part. "Please, Jack, let me come with you, please?"

Abby was so adorable when she begged, but on this, Jack was adamant. She needed some alone time, away from the Corps and away from NCIS. Abby was her dearest friend, but sometimes, space was needed for a relationship to flourish. "Abs, I already told you. I'm going out on medical leave." As she spoke, she winced as the bruised ribs shifted a bit. That was one of a couple injuries that only she and the CO that gave it to her knew about. "Director Shepard wants me to be back in top shape and completely healed by the end of the month. Not that my work isn't good enough injured, but it's her wish and my orders." She pretended to punch Abby's chin with a right cross. "Besides, you wouldn't want to hang around a hunter/Marine on vacation, Abs. We get trigger-happy when we're bored."

Abby pouted some more, but helped Jack finish up her packing. She was leaving to drive to Kansas that afternoon, driving through the night and making it there by morning. She would spend a week in Kansas with old friends, before going up to South Dakota to spend another week with her dad. She would come back in time for the big rush of cases as foretold by DiNozzo.

When the packing was done Abby left, slightly forlorn but placated by the promise that Jack would be back feeling better. Jack sighed as she closed and locked the door behind her as Abby left. She so missed Kansas, the place where she would spend her half of her summers as a kid. Gathering up her bags, she winced and grimaced her way down the driveway and tossed her bags in the trunk of her Camaro. Her baby purred to life as soon as she turned the key in the ignition, rolling out of the driveway without any halts. Showing her ID to the MP at the entrance to the base, she left Quantico with a happy heart.

* * *

It was seventeen hours on the road, but she made it to Kansas City by seven the next morning, taking the breaks as she needed to. Stopping at a rest stop for a stretch and fill-up on the tank, she changed into a white Under-Armour shirt and worn blue jeans. She wanted to impress her old friend and mentor, and this was just the way to do it: it was also the surest way to a slap to the back of the head, but what could she do about it? The trip to Lawrence after that break was short and brief, but not short enough. She pulled up to her mentor's house and stopped her car. Walking up the familiar concrete path and knocking on the door, she tucked her head to her chin and waited for her reaction.

"Oh mah lord! Jacklyn Singer?" A plump African American woman opened the door and grabbed Jack so fast that she had little time to reaction; the sound of her Creole accent reminded Jacklyn of awesome times in the past. Why did she stop visiting this place, anyway? Pushing her away, the lady took in the giant of a woman as she towered head and shoulders over her mentor.

"Hi, Missouri." As she let her come inside, she smacked Jack's head as quick as she could. "Ow!" Jack rubbed the back of her head at the impact site. "What was that for?"

"For not visitin'! For joinin' up with the Marines, and not givin' your aunt Missouri peace of mind for all those years!" As quick as she smacked the back of the Marine's head, Missouri snaked her arms around her protege and hugged tight. Jacklyn felt that in her ribs, but she let Missouri do it anyway. She had missed her mentor; it had been so long. "But, you're back!" Taking a closer look, she shook her head. "I'm sorry about Dean, hun. He was a good man."

Jack sighed and twisted the rings on her finger. "Yeah... that he was." Missouri led her inside, sitting her on the couch.

"Don't even think about puttin' your dirty shoes on mah nice clean table!" Jack had just sat down as Missouri wandered into the kitchen.

"Wasn't gonna, Missouri!" She shouted back as Missouri handed her a cup of milk tea.

"Don't you dare lie to a psychic, child!" They both laughed as Missouri sat down next to her. "Now, you just tell your ol' aunt what's been going on in that min' of yours."

Jacklyn sat back and began to tell it all from the beginning: from when she moved away from her father. She stuck to the facts, but she threw in a couple of funny stories about boot camp that made her laugh. Missouri just watched her, gauging her thoughts and reactions as her young protege told her about Iraq, about all the men she lost, about Dean, about her sickness, but also about her new job and team, Gibbs, and meeting up with Abby again. The tale, all in all, took until high noon. When she was finished, they both just sat there.

"Mah word, child!" Missouri began to walk into her little kitchen, past the beaded strands that Jack expertly walked under without a sound. "You are somethin'. Ain't that the truth." Missouri tossed her an apple. "So, Master Sergeant Jacklyn Singer, what would you like to do this fine week that you and I have together?"

Jack just laughed and finished her tea, tossing her apple one-handed up in the air a couple of times. She knew it was a good idea to come here.

* * *

Jack spent that week with Missouri learning about herbs and symbology, but Missouri also taught her more about voodoo, going back to where they had left off from her last visit. When she wasn't working at the kitchen table copying out the notes diligently that Missouri beat into her, she was in the garden harvesting the herbs or going out into the organic marketplace for some that were pretty rare and wouldn't grow in arid Kansas. With the voodoo lessons, Missouri, an experience houngan of the Haitian voodoo herself, taught her the components of goofer dust, the names of the loa and their symbols, and the morality debates that once were the highlight of her summer visits. They would debate on issues that affected the hunters, playing both sides of the coin to see the issue in its full depth. Particularly, it involved the killing of humans when exorcising demons. Would you exorcise a demon from a dying human, or would you let the demon free to have havoc on the earth?

It was strange. Most people on their vacations would go fishing or camping, but not Jack. Her idea of a vacation was exactly this: learning from her last remaining mentors. She loved the flow of information as it came from Missouri's mouth and through her pen onto paper. This was what calmed her down at the end of the day. Target practice worked just as well, but there was those pesky laws about shooting firearms within city limits without just cause. Besides, that was what shooting ranges were for. But this week was about her, and Missouri was most willing to oblige to continue her learning.

Besides their lessons, Missouri told her about Dean and Sam, and even their dad John. She was the one to place John on the path of hunting when he called her up and asked her to take a look at his burnt house. She was the one to tell him that supernatural things existed, and not all of them were kind to humans. She told Jack about little Dean, the one that had trailed her around the scrap yard before he would grow into her lover. However, she didn't want to see the old house of the Winchesters, or go by the school that Dean would have been enrolled in come that September. It was painful to still think of Dean as dead, but that was part of the healing process. With time, it would get better, hopefully.

Among other things, Missouri passed on her recipes. Nothing, but nothing, was better than a steaming bowl of Aunt Missouri's jambalaya. At least once a week, she would make it when Jacklyn used to visit in the summer times. Cornbread, jambalaya, gumbo: she wrote down those secret recipes to keep close to her kitchen when she got back to DC. She would have gained at least ten pounds on this trip if she didn't keep up her workout.

As a treat, Missouri bought them tickets to visit New Orleans for three days while she visited with some of her fellow practitioners. She gave Jack free rein on the city, and so she explored the shops and open-air bazaars. She spent a little on amulets for her team, little protective measures in case her two jobs collided, but a bit more on additional books to add to her library. As an awesome find, she found a rolled-up hemp carpet, undyed from the 'Motherland' as Missouri referred to Africa and done up with little designs in brightly-hued thread. It was one-of-a-kind, but the seller saw the military dog-tags and jarhead haircut on her and gave her the mat for half-price. She tried to pay more, knowing that Hurricane Katrina had pummelled this area of the country three years ago, and was still trying to recover. But he just shook his head and gave her the mat at his cut price.

Every day, be it in Lawrence or on Rue Bourbon, Jack kept up her work out regime. Running through the locals, using trees as chin-up bars, she kept with it. Throughout the SERE training, she was taunted by both her instructors and her fellow trainees not just because she was female, but also because she was muscular, more so than some of the guys. It was like Parris Island all over again: she had earned the respect of the men by training just as hard as they did, harder still when it came to their final test. She was kept in the hole for three days before they came after her, nursing her bruised ribs. She didn't reveal anything about the unit still in the woods, even when the CO pig-stuck her in the arm and made her bleed. He was a sadist through and through, but now she had friends who were SEALs, Rangers, and Delta Force from when she had kept the CO's attention on her long enough to let the other time break them out of the makeshift prison. They were connections in the military to help keep her connected, and as favours that she had collected from them all.

Some of the neighbourhood children in Lawrence took a liking to Jack as she ran past their houses in the mornings. Whenever she wore her Marine workout shirt and track pants, they came out in droves to try and keep pace with her. She was a hero to them; they invited her to join in their games, to help them play basketball, and tell them about Iraq. When the mothers saw that, they tried to tell their children to be polite and to leave her alone, Jack just shook her head, telling them that she didn't mind. It was a nod to her missing childhood as she played hoops with the local kids. They were normal, like she never could be, but they made her feel normal for that little sliver of time. It was living the American Dream, as Tony would try to tell her. She liked it.

On the final day of the week, when she would head out to South Dakota to be with Bobby, she was up late. Seeing the clock read nine-o'-clock before she rolled her carcass out of bed was definitely an odd feeling. The trunk of her Camaro was full of little mason jars of herbs that she was missing back home, as well as bags of goofer dust, her finds from New Orleans, and her weapons bag among her packed belongings (never leave home without it). She smelled the coffee that Missouri was brewing and ran downstairs. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Missouri reading the newspaper and sipping a mug.

"Don't even think about it, chile." Damn, she was good. Jack had just placed her hand on a mug, determined for some coffee. "Not until you talk with your Auntie." Holding back a sigh, she walked backwards until she sat in the chair and looked at Missouri. For a while, both of them said nothing. Jack knew that Missouri was trying to get a read on her, and so she just let her. There was nothing that she could do to ward off a psychic's search, at least nothing that she knew of, anyway.

"Did you love him, Jacky?" Wow, it was right to the hard stuff. Jack brought her hand to Dean's amulet as it hung around her neck. She had no idea why Sam would part with it, but she wore it nonetheless. "Were you truly in love with Dean?"

She took a moment to think of her answer. "Missouri, do you believe in soulmates?" Her mentor nodded, wondering about this new unexpected line of questioning. "Well, Dean was my soulmate. We were like two sides of a coin. We're stubborn, determined, and loyal to our loved ones. He brought me out of my funk from Iraq with a single kiss. We both taught each other something about ourselves: Dean taught me that it's okay to be unsure of ourselves, and I taught him that sometimes, family doesn't need to know everything." She ran her finger on the table cloth. "Did I love him? Yes. Do I miss him? Swounds, I do. But I just gotta move on. SERE was the second step. This trip," she tapped that same finger against the table, "this trip was the third step."

Missouri still looked a little confused. "What was the first step, hun?"

Jack lifted up her shirt and showed Missouri her newest tattoo. "Remembering him." Missouri gasped when she saw her name among all the hunters. "It's a list of the hunters that helped me become who I am, Auntie." She pulled the shirt back down and sat in the chair.

Both of them smiled for a moment. Missouri slapped the table and got up, pouring Jack a cup to drink. "Now, when you go and visit your dad, don't you dare go sharing my recipes with him. Or I'll slap the back of your hand with my spoon."

Jack held up her hands. "Wasn't gonna, Missouri. Wasn't even gonna share them with my team back in DC." At that, Missouri nodded her head.

"Speaking of your team, Jacky, here." She reached for a large Mason jar full of dried herb leaves. "Give this to Abby. She needs to focus more when she does her work; I can sense her from all the way out here. One tablespoon of that in hot water in the morning, and she'll never need another Caf-Pow again." Jack couldn't picture Abby without her Caf-Pow, but she took the jar anyway.

Come noon, she was all ready to go. Giving Missouri one last hug, she revved her Camaro into gear and made her way to the I-29. She had six hours to kill before she reached Sioux Falls. With Led Zeppelin screaming from her radio, she slipped her shades on her head and zoomed off into the distance.

* * *

Bobby was waiting for her when she stopped just in front of her old home, holding a beer for her in his hands. They exchanged stories, and poured a little on the ground for Dean and the other hunters that they knew. Unlike Missouri, he had tried to head-slap her when he saw the new tattoo. Jack just ducked and pinned his arm to the wall.

During that week, Bobby and Jack trained, just like they used to. She ran in and among the busted up cars, and in the afternoon they competed in marksmanship. Bobby couldn't keep up with the martial arts, so she won in that category. However, he patched her up as the bruises continued to fade and her shoulder and arm got better. It was hard enough training with a busted arm and broken fingers, but that busted shoulder would take another month to heal. Her ears were red from all the shouting as Bobby discovered the true extent of the damage, but she just ignored him.

One of her goals in coming out here was to get back her books. In New Orleans, she had found similar ones for him, but she wanted her personal copies back. So, she and Bobby swore and cursed as they organized his books and cleaned up the old house. She didn't say a word as they cleaned away the empty liquor bottles from his desk. SERE was her way of coping; drinking was his.

On the Thursday two days before she was supposed to head back to DC, they were just sitting around the kitchen tableand having some lunch when the phone rang. Bobby picked it up, only to hang it up again. "Who was it, Dad?" Jack looked from across the kitchen as she sipped her beer.

"Just some idjit wantin' money." The phone rang again, and Bobby answered it again. This time Jack heard the threat that he gave the caller, but didn't speak. It was his business, probably: someone wanting a part for their car that he didn't have.

Later that day, the doorbell rang. This time, Jack was the one to answer. Her dad wasn't expecting any customers, but it could've be anyone. If it was a demon, then the silver knife and rock salt-loaded shotgun on the table near the door would work just fine. She unlocked the dead bolts and opened the door, only to have her heart stop. The person standing in front of her, was Dean.


	12. Chapter 12

She stood there looking at the dead man walking, the same one that she had so easily declared to Missouri her soulmate; the graveyard dirt was still on his clothes and on his now-pale skin. He was whole: there were none of the vicious hellhound wounds from before, nor was there none of the expected decomposition of being in the grave since May. Speaking of, some small part of her mind wondered why he was buried and not salted and burned. But that didn't matter right at the moment. She felt the blood drain from her face, making her look whiter than a ghost; her mouth was open as she tried to breathe evenly at the sight of him.

He just stood there, looking at her; there was this look of quiet bliss on his face as he took her in. "Jack, it's me. I'm back."

"I don't..." She backed away from him, subtly reaching one of her hands behind her back. This had to be some kind of a trick. It had to be.

"I know. But here I am." He walked over the threshold, without an invitation and over the salt and devil's trap under the front carpet mat, and made to hug her.

She whipped her arm out at him, a silver blade in her hand. Bobby came running out of the kitchen and saw the two of them fighting. "Holy shit!" He made to grab another knife to join in the fight, but Jack shook her head and had one of her arms out to keep him away, non-verbally telling him to stay out of it.

"Woah, woah, woah, wait!" The Dean creature ran to get a counter between the two of them, trying to reason with the Marine in front of him. "Jack, it's really me!"

"My ass!" She made to swipe at him with the blade, but he dodged it.

"Wait! Your name is Jacklyn Marie Singer. You've been hunting since you were three. You joined the Marine Corps, and are a Gunnery Sergeant. You and I fell in love when we met out that second day back in your garage when you were fixing your Camaro." Bobby stopped at that piece of information, looking between the two people in front of him. Jack seemed to calm down, loosening her grip on the blade as she came closer to him. It was almost like she was moving to inspect him closer, to see if he was real. That was when she went for his throat. "Jack, I'm not a shapeshifter!" She came awfully close that last time, the blade nearly slicing through the thin layers of skin on his throat. He grabbed her and put her in a headlock.

"Then you're a revenant!" She slipped out of it, but Dean took hold of her knife and let her go, pushing her against the wall. "You're not real!"

"If I were any of that, could I do this with a silver knife?" He motioned for her and Bobby to be still, as he lifted up his sleeve and cut himself with the knife. Crimson red blood dripped down his arm from the cut. He looked up to see what was going on in their faces. Bobby was flabbergasted, shocked to see Dean alive. But Jack had only tears on her face as she saw the blood, the red blood coming from the silver-induced cut. She walked forward slowly, trying to understand what was happening. "Jack, it's really me." He walked forward and took her hand. He placed it on his chest, let her feel his heartbeat.

"Dean?" Her voice was so quiet, so distraught. She moved her hand underneath the top of his shirt to look at the pentacle there. Once she was satisfied that it was untouched, she wrapped her arms around him; it was so tight that he was having some trouble catching his breath. "But how?"

Dean relaxed as he returned the favour, feeling the hard plaster of the cast in the small of his back. "I don't know. Your guess is as good as mine." Without caring that Bobby was in the room, they both kissed. Jack cried a bit on his shoulder.

Bobby was the one to stop the moment with his typical blunt nature. "Well, this is fine and dandy and all, but what the hell happened to ya?"

* * *

Jack patched up Dean's arm as he told her and her dad what was going on. He told about him waking up in a cheap pine box, not knowing what was happening to him or where he was. He told them about digging his way out of the ground and seeing the nuclear-like damage to the trees and ground around his little grave. He walked to a convenience store and saw the date of the newspaper. He mentioned that something passed him by, because he had heard high-pitch screams loud enough to break glass. Then he tried to phone here, before hot-wiring a car and coming here in person.

The entire time that he was sitting down, Jack was expecting him to demon out any moment, despite the whole pentacle on his shoulder. Whatever had happened to him was something that she had never seen before, and she had seen many things in her career as both a hunter and a Marine. Her guard was still up, and the knife was still in reach; everyone in the room saw it, and knew that she was taking no chances with what was happening. Dean was nursing a beer (laced with holy water, as per normal Singer protocol), but after her encounter with Lilith and the lack of result with the holy substance, no assumptions were to be made.

"But that don't make a lick of sense." Bobby was standing behind his desk, trying to find a specific book on something. "Jack, where'd you put my _Demonica_?" He waved his hand absentmindedly in the air. She pointed with her head to the bookshelf. "Fourth shelf, near the right." He turned his attention back to Dean. "Dean, your chest was ribbons. Your insides were slop. And you've been buried for four months! Even if you could break out of Hell and back into your meatsuit-"

"I know, I should look like some Thriller video reject." He looked at Jack as she finished tying up his arm with some of the bandages from her trunk (never leave home without them). So far, her face was closed and revealing nothing to him, but he had seen the rings on her finger. Was she still holding a torch for him, or had she moved on?

"What do you remember?" Jack peered from her father to Dean in front of her, looking for nothing in particular.

Dean shook his head as he tested out his arm. "Not much. I remember being a hellhound's chewtoy. And then, light's out. Next thing you know, I wake up six feet under in a pine box." Jack leaned back and sipped some of the laced beer in Dean's hand. All three of them paused for a moment. "I don't get why I'm in one piece, or why I'm even alive. Plus, there's this." Dean lifted up his left shirt sleeve and showed off a fresh scar: a bright red handprint that had keloided on his right upper arm. "It's like something yanked me out, or rode me out."

"_Damnú ort!_" Jack was on her feet in an instant, looking at the scar. "Shit, shit, shit!" She began mumbling to herself, trying to supremely freak the guys out and succeeding. "Dean, this is bad. This is really bad." She rubbed the back of her shaved head. "Dean, demons didn't pull you out."

"How the hell do you know?" Bobby's glare shot daggers at her.

"Because demons don't leave scars, you bonehead! Demons never leave scars! Whatever pulled out you has some massive power, some serious mojo behind its name." She gently pulled the shirt sleeve back down, not wanting to look at the ominous portent on her lover's arm. "When I get back to my house, I'll do more research. None of the right books are here. But for now, we're down one member of the team."

Dean looked around. "Yeah, Sam's number's not working. He isn't-"

"No, he's not." Jack went into the kitchen and took out two more beers for her and her dad. "I kept an eye on him as best as I could. He's been hunting." She sighed a bit. "He's been after the demon that put you there."

"Damn it, Sammy!" Dean was up in an instant, trying to get his coat on. "We gotta find him."

"Sit your ass down, Dean. You don't even know where he is." That got Dean to slow down.

"And you do?"

"No. Sam's being a dick about your death, Dean. Had the balls to come into my house and accuse me of holding out on knowing about your deal." She rubbed her eyes and waited for Dean and Bobby both to look at her with questions on her face. "I've met Lilith before New Harmony." She held up her hands when they made to ask more questions. "Shut your gobs before I sew them shut. I was studying fire demons in Iraq, Dean, when I stumbled on her. She was the one, or her helpers at least, to set off the bomb that injured me before my tour's end. I got her message. I stopped studying the demons, cause soon it was time for my tour's end and I would prefer to come back in one piece, more or less.

"You made a deal with a demon?" Bobby wanted to smack her silly, but she shook her head.

"No, Dad. I didn't deal with her. I just stopped researching. That's a massive difference." Dean looked at her, waiting for the rest. "Like I told Sam, what was I going to tell you: that Lilith is in charge of the fire demons in Iraq? That wasn't incredibly pertinent to your deal, Winchester. Then he went off on some massive rant on how he's becoming what his father wanted him to be. He was a soldier, and he was going to act like one, unlike me." Both men were flabbergasted at the statement.

"Sam... accused you... of not being a soldier?" Dean rubbed his face. His kid brother insulted a veteran Marine? Shit, and it was a wonder that she was even willing to talk to him.

"You can understand how after that I banned him from my house on threat of buckshot." She shot a glance at Bobby who gave her a discrete nod. "I've no time for bullshit, gentlemen, not with a real paying job and a team that watches out for me on the betting table. I can patch you up; I can help you with research. But I only do little hunts for now, ones in the jurisdiction of NCIS." She sat up, going to the door. "Sam's using 'Wedge Antilles', Dean. That much, I do know."

"Oh, here." She stopped for a moment, taking off the amulet and ring. "I kept these for you." She looked at him. "I never stopped loving you, Dean. Come and see me in Quantico some time, guys. That's my cell number." She kissed Dean, said bye to her dad, and headed back to base early.

* * *

When Gibbs came down to her office on Monday, he saw her smiling and heard her humming as she walked around. He looked at her with that raised eyebrow look that he had patented with Tony whenever he wanted information. "So, did you vacation go well?"

Jack sipped from her coffee, stared at Gibbs for a moment, before going over inventory for a second time. "It was most definitely interesting, Gibbs. Definitely interesting."


	13. Chapter 13

Jack was up with Gibbs by his desk chewing the fat about the boat in his basement(he finally had the keel finished, and was now working on the interior) when she got called down to the main entrance by the security guard. It was something about a couple of visitors asking about her. Odd: she never got visitors, not during work days at least. When she got down to the front gate, she got the surprise of her life. Dean and Sam were waiting there, getting ready to be searched by the obviously green security guard there. "Corporal!" She barked out, her deep voice going even lower. The poor guy snapped to attention, sweat pouring down his brow. "What are you doing, Corporal?"

The Winchester boys looked at each other, eyebrows raised at the change in her demeanor. They saw her now in her utility uniform, walking towards them with purpose in her step. The unfortunate corporal swallowed for a moment before answering. "Ma'am, I have orders to search all people for weapons, ma'am. Director's orders." She nodded her head, allowing him that. She had forgotten about the new orders from Director Shepard issued while she was at SERE. There were no weapons allowed in NCIS except by the investigative teams. She was pissed when she first found that out, when the guards insisted that she by x-rayed for hidden weapons underneath her uniform and cast. Damn it, Shepard was getting paranoid. Maybe it was because new orders had come in from SECNAV for her: the Director was going to be transferred to another agency branch in New York. Her replacement was coming in by the end of the week. At least, that was what she had heard in the grapevine.

"Carry on, Corporal. I'll sign for the visitors." She walked forward and returned the salute, letting the Marine relax.

"Aye, aye, Master Sergeant!" Again, there was the curious eyebrow lift from the brothers. When did she get promoted? Jack didn't tell them that as she signed her John Hancock next to D. Winchester and S. Winchester, logging them into the system. "I'll take them, Corporal."

"Yes, ma'am." The poor guy saluted, which she returned once again, and let the Winchester brothers into NCIS, guest badges clearly visible on their jackets.

Once they were near her office, she turned around and looked at them with a no-bullshit glance. "Now, boys. Please explain what the hell you're doing here at my work."

Dean shrugged his shoulders and looked at her with that puppy-dog face of his. "We thought that we would pay you a visit, and you weren't home."

Jack's brow furrowed. "How'd you get on base?"

Sam was the one to answer that. "We didn't. We asked if you were home, and the MP looked it up for us in the log." His voice was still gravelly, like he was pissed at her for something.

She sighed before walking them into Autopsy. Ducky and Palmer, thank God, were not in quite yet. She led them through the little corridor and into her office. Dean, immediately, sprawled out on the bed and sighed. Sam made do by leaning against the wall. "So, I ask again, guys. What are you doing here?" She rubbed her arm, still in its sling. Ducky had used his x-ray machine on it and told her that her injuries from SERE were almost healed, but she needed another two weeks in both the sling and the cast before he would help her take them off.

Sam looked at her before looking at the ground. Dean looked pointedly at him, like he knew that Sam had something to say. "Jack, I'm sorry." It came out as a mumble. Jack looked at him, not understanding a word that he said. He rolled his eyes and said it louder. "I'm sorry." That time, she could understand. "You were right."

After a moment of incomprehension, she knew what he was referring to. Dean had this triumphant smirk on his face, like he had done something good. "It's okay, Sam. We were both grieving." She patted his arm before smacking Dean upside the head. "You came here to make Sam apologize?" He shrugged his shoulders, almost like he was asking, "Yeah?" She rubbed the back of his head before kissing him.

_"Jack!"_ Both boys jumped at the sound, but she went over to her speaker phone. "Yeah, Gibbs?"

_"Tony got another concussion. Need you to check it out." _There was a pregnant pause. _"Who's down there with you?"_

Jack motioned for them to keep quiet. "Just some old friends, Boss. I'll be up in a jiff." She turned to the boys. "You don't leave this room. Got it? If anyone knocks, you don't answer. Not a word, not a sound." This was going to be interesting to explain to Gibbs if he wanted some answers.

She left the room just as Ducky and Palmer came in. For once, Jimmy was on time. "Ah, Jacklyn!" Ducky put his hat and jacket on the stand and came over to shake her hand. "Later today, come back down and I'll remove the stitches from your arm."

"Thanks, Duck." She patted him on the shoulder before heading upstairs. It was a quicky: DiNozzo had the hardest head on the team; he would be fine. However, she did confiscate his pizza.

"Hey! I just bought that!" She took a slice and kept the box away from him, biting into the glorious pepperoni and green pepper heaven.

"Yeah, and the results of your blood tests came back. Cut back on the cholesterol, Tony, or you could get a heart attack." He kind of sobered up, but Gibbs shook his head when she offered to share the pizza with him. "Hey, Gibbs. I'm kind of busy today. Just ring me down in my office if you need anything." She headed back down, her prize in hand. She opened the door to the infirmary and saw Dean looking through the drugs. "Don't even think about it, Winchester." She placed the pizza down on the table and smacked the back of his head before locking her drug cabinet. "Authorized entry only."

Dean swiped a slice of pizza, somewhat mollified. She got serious, looking between the two of them. "Seriously, guys. You can't be here." She looked at them both with the same degree of tired frustration. "I could get fired. Besides, I'm seriously behind on paperwork." She rubbed the back of her head. "Here." She wrote down her pass number onto the base." Get this to the MP at Quantico. Tell him you're my cousins or something. I'll meet you at my house later today, guys." When Dean began to speak, she stopped him. "Go now. Do not be seen!" They left her room, but she realized something too late. Ducky and Palmer were still in Autopsy! She rushed out of the room, only to see Gibbs, Ducky, Dean, Jimmy, and Sam looking at each other before looking at her. "Oh, shit!" She hit her forehead and moaned. This was so bad.

* * *

"Who are you?" Gibbs had his gun drawn and pointed at Dean's centre of mass in no time at all. He and Ducky had met Sam briefly back at the barbecue, but Dean was a whole new kettle of fish.

Before Jack could make up any kind of lie to cover this up, Dean stuck out his hand and introduced himself. "Winchester, Dean Winchester." Gibbs and Ducky's faces were the perfect picture of shock. Jack had told them all that Dean was dead, some kind of hunting accident. It had been months since anyone had seen him. What was he doing here?

"Jacklyn, my dear, you have some explaining to do." Ducky looked at their medical officer as her face went white.

"Gibbs, please slap me on the head." He cocked his head at her, demanding an explanation. "These two nimrods decided to pay me an unexpected visit during work hours. It wouldn't happen again, Boss." She glared daggers at Dean and Sam. "Dean wandered into my father's house, with no word from him for months. It turns out that he had some injuries from the hunt that landed him in a backwater hospital. But now he's back, and I'm screwed at this current moment in time."

Just when Dean began to open his mouth to try and explain himself, the lights began to flicker and the air got cold. All three of the hunters looked at each other. "Oh shit!" Jack rolled her eyes. This day was gonna be awful...

* * *

It did not take long for the others to come rushing down to Autopsy. It was like the entire team had radar on Gibbs' location; that was pretty ironic, seeming how Gibbs and Jack could and would sneak up on them whenever they had the chance. "Boss, what's going on?" Tony shot a look at Gibbs before taking in Dean and Sam. "Who are you?" In a second, Tony had his gun pointed at Dean. Sam just kept his hands up.

"Enough!" Jack disarmed Tony in a matter of seconds, putting the gun on safety and handing it back to him. "You can interrogate me later, DiNozzo. Right now, Dean, Sam, and I gotta save you guys." Luckily, it was the weekend: only Gibbs, the team, Abby, Ducky, and Palmer were ever here. Even the Director took the weekend away from the building; she mostly spent her time up on the Hill with meetings.

"Where you'd keep your stuff, Jack?" Dean was all business now.

"In the trunk of my car." She looked around Autopsy before heading into the storage closet. "Sam!" She tossed him a bag of salt and they both got to work securing Autopsy. "Dean and I gotta get our stuff. You stay here and make sure they don't leave." As a safety measure, she headed into her office. Coming out, she tossed Dean one of her spare Glocks and cocked the one in her hand.

"What's going on?" Abby burst into the room and nearly went into shock at the sight of Dean. "How?"

"Abby?" Dean took a look at her, trying to remember her; he didn't spend a whole lot of time with the Scuitos, not in the same way that Jack had. "Are you related to Greg Scuito?" She mutely nodded her head. "Stay calm, a spirit's gotten into the building." That only made Abby faint. Even Gibbs stared at the prone form of his forensic scientist on the ground, until Ducky berated them all into action for letting her chill on the cold floor. Dean and Jack took that moment to run out of the building and head to their cars.

With only a few minutes, they saw the entire building going haywire: lights flickering on all of the floors; the air around them getting really cold; the hairs on the backs of their necks were standing on edge, and all of their senses were on hyper-alert. Something big was going down, and it had chosen NCIS as its battleground.

They both filled up their duffels with everything that they needed: shotgun cartridges; shotguns; Glocks; the silver plated Makarov and Colt 1911 that each hunters preferred; the bags of holy water flasks and rock salt; anti-possession amulets; a book of exorcisms and sigils; cans of spray-paint. Both of them took a look at the other, nodded, and ran back into the building. The corporal standing guard at the main entrance was dead, his throat slit. Seeing that, both of them ran faster, meeting up with Sam back in Autopsy.

"Sam!" Jack tossed him a shotgun, her attention solely on saving her friends. He loaded it with the salt buckshot.

"What the hell is going on?" Tony placed a hand on her shoulder, trying to make her slow down.

"Twenty questions later, Tony." She pushed him out of the way and re-salted the door, drawing a quick devil's trap with the spray paint on the floor.

Ducky was in shock at the utter vandalism of his workplace. "Jacklyn, what are you doing?" He was in utter shock, grabbing the arm with the still-healing stitches. Jack grimaced before taking his hand off her.

"I'm trying to save your lives. Twenty questions later."

"Wolf." She looked at Gibbs, an exasperated look on her face. "Just tell them."

Ziva spoke up. "Tell us what?" Jack just rolled her eyes. This was going to be a long day.

* * *

"Wait, you hunt _monsters_?" Tony looked at her after they had finished demon-proofing Autopsy; the sheer look on his face suggested that she was crazy as Ducky slowly removed the stitches in her arm. Dean's face went blank at he saw the true extent of what had happened to her at SERE. It seemed that only the hunters and Gibbs were the ones being calm as they sat in Autopsy looking at her sitting on one of the examination benches.

"Yes." She didn't care right now what they thought. They could mock or ridicule her later, after they made it out of here alive. Breaking the reverie, there was a knock at the Autopsy door; someone was trying to get in. Abby shrieked as she pointed to the glass door. She, Dean, and Sam all cocked their weapons and turned to the door. There, standing in front of them, was the corporal from the front gate. His throat was slit, but his eyes were black. Demonic possession.

Jack opened the door; they were safe for the moment because he couldn't get past the salt lines or the devil's trap. Plus, she and the brothers were protected by their anti-possession tattoos. So as long as her team remained behind her, they were okay. "What do you want?"

"Why, Jacky? You don't remember me?" Dean saw her grip on the Makarov tighten. "But then, you were only three, I think?"

The skin of her face went tight and white as she recognized demon in front of her. "You bastard." She aimed the gun right at his head despite the yelling of her team behind her. With a single shot, she shot the demon in his tracks right between the middle of his eyes. She felt the team watching her and refused to react. This was none of their business. She turned to Dean and Sam, ignoring the shocked look of her teammates. "Now what happened to you guys after last I saw you?" Dean saw that her arm was bleeding, and her knuckles were white around the sidearm; hell, she was as white as a sheet.

"Well, I rose from the dead. That hand print on my shoulder? That's an angel. His name is Castiel. He 'gripped me tight and raised me out of Perdition', according to him. Apparently, God has plans for me. Just this weekend, one of the seals of the Apocalypse broke. Ghosts from our past came back and began to kill the hunters that couldn't save them." Dean walked past the shocked NCIS members and went into her office, emerging with her bottle of whiskey and three glasses. With practiced ease, he poured three quarter-glasses and tossed his back. "All in all, it's a wonderful life."

"Well, ain't this just peachy." Jack and Sam did the same; Sam winced a bit at the taste.

"Wolf. What is going on?" Tony got closer to her; he looked like a madman.

"DiNozzo, guys. Sit down. I haven't told you everything." All of them perched on autopsy benches, Ducky and Gibbs taking the two chairs at Ducky's desk. "First, put these one. They'll protect you." She tossed them the bag of amulets. "First, understand that I've been doing this since I was three. My mother was possessed by a demon, the same one whose vessel I just killed a second time. My dad- you guys know him as Robert Wisdom from the CDC- is actually Bobby Singer. He and I have been hunting the supernatural since my mother's death. We protect the unknowing, that being you, from your worst nightmares.

"Second thing, understand that if you try to back-trace any of this, I'll disappear. I'm gone, and you will never see me again. I trust you guys enough to respect that." Ducky came forward without a word and finished bandaging up her arm. "Dean and Sam's story is different. For every hunter, how they stumble into this is their own. Needless to say, I'm the senior hunter. When I tell you to do something, you do it without question. If you want to live, you do what I say." Ziva and Tony glared at her until Gibbs nodded his head.

"Boss, you seriously can't believe this, can you?" Tony was flabbergasted. "I mean, angels and demons? This is something out of a book."

"Tony's right. Why should we believe them?" McGee and Palmer were slowly siding with Tony.

"Because, they're right. Demons exist." Gibbs showed them the demon wound that he had shown Jack a long time ago. "Now shut up and listen." He looked at Jack and motioned for her to continue.

"Those amulets that you're wearing will stop a demon from entering you." She motioned to the Marine laying on the floor. "What you saw, a Marine walking around with his throat slit and clearly dead, that's a demon riding a human." She motioned for Ducky to examine the throat to confirm her statement of death. "They can do it forever, and it doesn't matter in regards to any damage done to the human. It's like mind control, but not really. Demon will enter you, shove your mind aside, and take over control of your body for as long as it wants to. Those necklaces will stop the demon from entering you in the first place."

"But what about you guys?" McGee looked carefully at the necks of the three hunters. "You guys don't have one on."

Without a word, Sam and Dean moved their shirt aside and revealed the pentacles over their heart. Jack turned around and got Dean to help her take off her uniform jacket and shirt, revealing her shoulders and the devil's trap on her neck. "We don't need them, McGee." She rubbed her hands together. "Now, salt will repel them, but it doesn't kill. Nothing kills a demon."

"Jack, this does." Sam took out Ruby's knife.

"Yeah, that does. Downside is that only you have it, though. Unless your buddy made more of those, nothing we have can kill a demon." She turned back to the team. "We can exorcise them, get them out of the bodies, but that takes some time. The devil's trap is just that: a trap. Demons can't get out."

"Then why you do have one tattooed to your neck?" Palmer was looking green, like he was about to be sick.

"Because the version on my neck is different. It locks out demons." Jack looked around, trying to get a control on the situation. "Now, you guys don't do anything." Protests rang out, but she whistled loudly to quell them. "The three of us can do this. Don't try to help. We don't want civilian blood on our hands." The lights flickered again, this time more frequently. The air chilled again, making their breath show like mist. "It's here."

"Jacky?" Instead of the voice of a malevolent demon, this time it was a voice that she knew. Jack's heart stopped as she slowly turned around. There, standing outside of the salt lines, were the spirits of Caleb, Pastor Jim, and John Winchester. Caleb was the one speaking. He looked the same as he did before his throat got slit; even the half-smile on his face was the same. His black hair was still shorn close to his head, his brown eyes half-serious, half-mischievous.

"Uncle Caleb?" She tightened her grip on her pistol. "This isn't real. You're dead. You're all dead."

"But my dear, this is very real." Pastor Jim walked forward over the salt lines, that benevolent smile on his face as he stared at her and her only. The priest's collar shone white in the dim light around his neck. His white hair was still short, but his smile was real. His blue eyes glinted with love as he looked at her.

Jack was, by now, clutching her chest and gasping for air. For the first time, the entire team saw her crack. For the first time, they saw the scared little girl that wished so badly to go and hug the ghosts because they were her family. The NCIS team didn't know how to act, but luckily someone did. Dean stepped up to her elbow and held her up, his eyes focused on the apparition of his dad. "Easy, Jack. Take a breath." She was like a little child, following the instructions as he helped her to the ground to sit.

"Dean." John Winchester stepped over the salt and tried to walked towards him. Without even a word, Dean brought his shotgun up to aim it right at his father. A spirit was a spirit, even if if wore the face of his father.

"Explain. Now." Dean was taking this a lot better than the others; he was still calm and in control. Sam was silently weeping at the sight of his dad, but he too kept up his weapons. The others were just in simple shock.

"Spirits can travel from the heavens to help out those who need it, son." Pastor Jim and Caleb followed suit, standing at John's side. "We were sent here to give you the help you need to win this fight."

"Ace, none of us want the Apocalypse. Most of the angels, however, do. They want the fight so that they can kill the Devil. Nothing more. It doesn't matter how many human lives are lost in the struggle." Caleb knelt by Jack and began to rock her gently. "There, there, Jacky. It's okay." She looked at him, felt the weight of his hands, and threw her arms around him.

"Caleb, I'm so sorry. I wasn't here. I shoulda been here!" She sobbed in the arms of her surrogate uncle. "You, Pastor Jim, John, Uncle Dan. I shoulda been here, not at war. Not at war. Why? Why was I? Why aren't I dead?"

"Jack Singer." John stood in front of her. "You couldn't stopped it. None of it. This was supposed to be." Dean and Sam's mouths dropped as John knelt next to Caleb and kissed her forehead. "You're a good soldier, but not even a seasoned Marine could've prevented our deaths. It was meant to be." Jack just nodded her head as she wiped the tears away and stood in front of them.

"Damn, girl!" Caleb looked up at her; he was a tall man at six feet, but she had the four inches over him. "You got big!" All three of the ghosts looked at the hunter that they all considered a daughter before turning to the brothers. "Dean, I can see why you love her so much. She's just as crazy as you. Sammy, you're doing all right, too. But listen to Dean on this one, kiddo. He's got all the balls in this game."

"So, what did you come down here to tell us?" Jack looked at them and smiled. Gibbs just shook his head in amazement. His medical officer was talking to ghosts like they were family, and the two brothers, one of whom was apparently recently risen from the dead, stood by her side and joined her.

"First, here." Pastor Jim told Jack to write something on a piece of paper. "This is the location of my cache. Get it and use it, Jacklyn. You know the combination to the locks. It has all of the information you need on the upcoming battles: the seals, Lilith, everything. It was one of the last things that I was working on."

"Secondly, stick together. Jack can still work at NCIS as a medic, but she will always be a Marine." The team stared at her, but Caleb just kept talking. "Dean, she's not retired yet. She is still accountable to the Corps."

"Not retired yet, Uncle Caleb?" She cuffed the ghost's shoulder. "You're making me sound old. I remember patching up your ass more than I can count, old man."

"Yeah, but still. Master Sergeant Jacklyn Singer, medic and kick-ass hunter. Damn, girl, you're all important now. Who would've known?" John nodded his head. "That means that Dean and Sam can come to you, but it has to continue to be at your home. It's too risky to do it here."

"Good thing I like living in DC, then." Jack chuckled a bit. "So wait, there's no demon here, is there?"

"No."

"Then what killed the corporal?"

"There was a demon, Jacklyn." Pastor Jim shook his head. "We killed it." At that, all three hunters slowly lowered their weapons, but kept them ready nonetheless. "Guys, don't trust the angels. Don't trust the demons. Do your own research, and you will do what is necessary to end this war."

An end? Jack, Sam, and Dean sighed for a moment. This could all end? They shook their heads. No, hunting would never end. It would just get quiet again. The ghosts knew that, but their words were meant to comfort, at least. They slowly began to disappear, but not before a proper farewell was spoken to them all. Jack raised her glass of whiskey and spilled some of it on the ground. "To the dead."

A massive white light filled them up, erasing all signs of that they were ever here: the salt, the sigils. Even the dead body was gone as well. Only the people in the Autopsy room knew what had happened. Jack turned to Dean and Sam before looking at Gibbs and his team. "We're got work to do."


	14. Chapter 14

It had been a few weeks since the Autopsy incident, as Jack had come to call it, and still the team asked her questions about her alter-life. Finally, she put a stop to it all, if not for the sake of quiet but for the sake of her own sanity. Gathering all of them up, she invited them over to her place after work that day. She needed to be on familiar and comfortable ground in order to answer these questions, the questions that were the staple of her childhood and teenage years all the way until now. She never told them that over the weekend after the incident, she had headed out to Blue Earth, Minnesota. It was a seventeen hour trip, but she made it in fourteen; she broke how many speeding regulations, but she didn't care. She loaded up her trunk with everything from Pastor Jim's lock-up, his 'Tomb' as he called it in life. It was where he kept all of his research, all of his weapons. Everything was now hers. On her return, she organized her safe room to fit it all, as well as tidying it up a touch for her guests.

Gibbs was the first to arrive. He didn't knock on the door, but he regretted it the moment that he stepped through when he saw Jack and one of the Marine wives sitting at her table. "Jethro, give us a minute, will you?" He turned away, but he couldn't get the sight of her holding the wife's hand or the tears that were falling from the wife's face out of his head. That was why she looked familiar: she was the wife that Jack had given the flag to at the funeral that they had all attended before her SERE assignment. He heard her sigh for a moment and talk in quiet tones. Jack was obviously comforting the woman. It only took several minutes before the wife left.

Jack's place had changed from the last time that they had visited. He saw several symbols painted discretely on the walls that looked African, while the feathered masks were definitely Aztec. There were dream-catchers, Celtic symbols, and what looked like Hebrew letters painted on the walls to look decorative, but he was sure that they held some other measure for his medical officer. There were also weapons, looked tribal from the lack of use and sense of display on them. Other than that, this house looked no different from any other that he had gone into to interrogate families. When the wife left, he turned back to Jack and looked at her.

"Decided to stop hiding them up in my room." She paused by the symbols. "Adinkra symbols, Gibbs, from Ghana. Each symbols means a different thing, but it's a form of communication." She sighed and ran her good hand through her hair. She was still looking worse for wear from her SERE assignment. Ducky had finally allowed her to remove the cast, but he saw the massive scars on her arm from what looked like a surgery. She saw where he was looking, and poured herself a finger of whiskey from her table. "Ducky was furious when I didn't tell him. Because of the CO's... enthusiasm at SERE, I now have three screws and one iron rod in my arm and wrist to keep them together. The bone-saws at Bethesda were furious when they saw the damage the first time around. From what I heard, the CO from the SERE program has been... retired, since then." She sighed and winced as she ran her hand over her shoulder and collarbone. "Still a little tender, though." A little tender? From where Gibbs was standing across the room, he could see the bruises on her shoulder joint that almost ran down to her elbow.

"The others will be here soon." She nodded and sat down, letting Gibbs sit as well.

"I'd prefer to do this in one fell blow, Gibbs, if you wouldn't mind waiting." He did nothing, but she knew that he was agreeing with her. He sipped at his coffee, counting down the seconds that it took for the rest of the team to come. In total, seven hundred and twenty seconds passed by in complete silence until the door bell rang. Jack got up and opened the door, letting Tony, McGee, Ducky, Palmer, Abby, and Ziva in without a word. They were all talking and joking around, that was until Jack cleared her throat for a moment.

"So, I know you guys all have questions." Tony scoffed at her; a few? "But, let me explain first from the very beginning." She leaned back in her chair and sipped at the whiskey in her hand. "I have never done this before, so bear with me. Most people that I know are either from the Corps, armed forces, or hunters. I don't have that many friends, outside of you lot. However," her face hardened for a moment, "if you even think about looking up any of the names or pursuing any leads into my background, I'm gone." She placed the whiskey down on the table, leaned forward so that she was sitting in the middle of the leather seat, and began her story.

"I was three when I first started this. A demon possessed my mother, and my father killed her before my eyes. That night, we both promised each other that we would never allow ourselves to be weak again. The very next day, we got a phone call from one Missouri Moseley. She's a psychic, the best damn one in the state of Kansas. She, and another hunter by the name of Rufus Turner, got my dad started in the hunting business. He would do hunts, research the demons, and I would learn from his research.

"Caleb Reeves, Daniel Elkins, and Pastor Jim Murphy taught me everything that I know. Caleb was in charge of my physical training: he gave me regimes to work through since I was four and until I was sixteen and could fight him and beat him every time. Daniel Elkins taught me tracking, how to read the trails, how to sense when the monsters are around. Pastor Jim, he was the researcher behind it all. He taught me the exorcisms, the prayers; hell, everything that I know on my book shelves I learned from him. I would spend my summers between Missouri and Jim, learning from the both of them.

"My first kill was at the age of six. I took down a ghost. Simple salt-and-burn." She paused at the hunter term. "You find the bones of the ghost, salt them, and then burn them. That usually solves the problem. The same applies with poltergeists, only they tend to revolve around an object in the house that they haunt.

"I met John Winchester and his boys when I was ten. At the time, Dean was just an annoyance that would follow me around the junkyard with little Sammy in tow. They would pop in every once in a while. I was hunting a lot more those days, usually just weekend trips. I would spend some of those weekends at Abby's place while her uncle and my dad hunted." Everyone looked at Abby, who just nodded at Jack. "Abs isn't a hunter, so don't pester her, guys.

"When I was twenty, I moved from South Dakota to Chesapeake Bay. Became a paramedic. Joined the Corps, got my house. Went overseas. During that time, all of them: Caleb, Elkins, John, Pastor Jim... they were all killed by the same things that we all hunted. Came back here in April, reunited with my dad and the Winchester brothers. Fell in love with Dean." She rubbed the ring around her finger before continuing. "Three weeks after I came back, Dean was dead. He had made a deal with a crossroads demon a year earlier to save his brother, and the price was his soul. I watched as his body was ripped apart, as the life in his eyes left.

"During the time of that mysterious biohazard scare, when I was the one infected and got to stay at Bethesda, Abby found out that the contagion was actually a strain of demonic biological warfare. It does... terrible things to a person's system. My dad, he got it out of me. But it just reminded me that death comes to us all, and that sooner or later, I would join Dean and the rest of the hunters that have fallen in this war.

"When I took my vacation back in the first week of September, Dean came to my dad's house in South Dakota, alive and whole. It took some convincing to assure me that it was really him. He told me that he was pulled out of Hell. Later, he confirmed that it was by an angel. Makes sense, since the omens add up." She stopped, finished with what she would share, and looked at the flabbergasted looks on the team's faces, sans Gibbs and Abby. "Now you can ask your questions."

McGee, surprisingly, was the first. "How do you know?" He fidgeted in his seat. "I mean, where's the proof?"

"The legends of old, McGee, are usually all based on truth. People don't make these things up." She got up from her seat and pulled out a Bible from her shelf. "Angels and demons are written in here, which I believe some of you read." She pulled out a copy of the Talmud and the Koran. "They're in here as well." She ran her hand over the spines of her books. "Every culture has its own myths about monsters, its own tales. It's just a matter of finding them and the right way to kill them, if they do harm to humans. Some of them are good monsters, but the majority just like to create chaos."

"How do you kill them?" Of course, Tony would ask that question.

"Depends. Salt is the best deterrent. Usually works on ghosts and spirits. Demons can't cross pure salt lines. Has to be un-iodized, though. Rock salt only. Fire works, too, usually for more corporeal forms. Prayer and exorcisms for demons. Silver for werewolves. Depends."

Ducky was surprisingly calm. "Have you ever met any of these things?"

Jack just laughed. "Ducky, I've met a lot of things. Wendigos, ghosts, werewolves, vampires... demons are most often. I've fought countless cultural demons, but I can't list them off the top of my head anymore. The hardest one was a Vanir in one of the old Scandinavian towns on the coast. Had to wait a certain time in the year to find a certain tree and burn it, without the town knowing. Wouldn't make me a popular girl if they had found out." She stood in front of them, leaning against one of the bookcases. "Are you all still wearing the pendants I gave you?" All but Tony lifted up the cord.

When Gibbs stared at him, Tony began to look nervous. "Come on, Boss! I... this can't be real! I mean, demons? Angels? Naw... it's not possible!" Jack finished off her whiskey.

"Guys, I want to show something before I finish off the Q&A session." Turning around, she stripped off her shirt. For the first time, her team saw all the scars, all the tattoos. She kept her bra on, but began to show them. "Tony, I've been doing this my whole life. I know some things are hard to explain, but it's real. What you saw back in Autopsy, the dead security guard, he was possessed by the same demon that did this." She pointed to a scar below her left collarbone. "He held me at knife point, wearing my mother's skin, and brought me before my dad. This one," she pointed to the top of a burn scar on her hip, "was from a hellhound hunt. My backup got careless with the flares, and he shot one at me. All of these, Tony, except for the ones from the surgery, are from my hunting." She slipped her shirt back on. "You may not believe, Tony, but I do. Can you wear this, at least to keep my mind happy?" She passed him another of the amulets, and he placed it grudgingly on.

_Jack, why don't you show them the room downstairs?_ Abby signed to her. Gibbs looked between them, the first confused look on his face today.

_I'm getting to it, Abs._ Jack nodded and led them to the bookcase. She pushed it aside with her good arm and placed her hand against a top-of-the-line scanner. Taking a breath, she waited for a moment before the door opened. The team looked inside at the forbidden texts, the collection of weapons. "Tony, this is what you use to hunt demons." She moved her hand along the shelves of guns and knives. "This is why, if you suspect anything following you, you come to my place. It's the safest place in the city; not even Gibbs' place is safer than mine. You come to my door at any hour of the day, pour a ring of salt around yourself, and pray to whatever gods you believe in. Pray loud and hard, and it should work."

She began to sign once more to Abs. _Take them upstairs, Abby. I need a moment._ That was all it took before Jack passed out, hitting the ground just as hard as a falling brick.

* * *

She woke up to a hand gently slapping her cheek. The light was shining through the windows; she wasn't in her basement anymore. She blinked her eyes a couple of times and slapped her hand against the ground. She heard Ducky mumble, but Abby poured some holy water on her face and she woke up.

"Abs. Second book case, third shelf. Small bottle." She waved her hand, motioning her to move faster. There was a small hip flask that was pressed in her hand. Jack drank from it slowly. Ducky took it away from her and smelled it. "It's safe, Ducky. Nothing illegal." Abby helped her to sit up against her couch and take a few breaths. "It's getting better, Abs." Gibbs thought back in the last few weeks. Jack had seemed quite different: she was weaker. She had been paler than normal. What was going on?

Abby seemed to be the only one in the room understanding what was happening. She looked at her friends and told them to leave as she helped Jack up the stairs and away from the team. Gibbs followed them, watching Abby lay Jack out on her bed and pour salt around her. Jack moaned in bed as her eyes rolled back in her skull for a moment. Abby kept murmuring Latin, making Jack roll on the bed. "What the hell?" Abby jolted when she heard Gibbs. But then she sat down with a sigh.

"Her SERE training was more than what she told you. She was interrogated for two weeks, Gibbs. Her team watched as she was beaten within an inch of her life. The man broke her arm in five places, her wrist in three. She was hung by her dislocated shoulder and collarbone for two days. Broken ribs, the ones barely healed from Iraq, were re-broken. No food, no water. Her nose was broken four times; it's a wonder she can breathe through it. Multiple black eyes. Her arm was sliced open. She has a knife wound on her leg, but it's also healed." She rubbed a small circle in her best friend's hand. Her voice became monotone as she listed off her friend's injuries. Gibbs grew angrier and angrier as he finally realized what his medical officer had gone through. Why hadn't she told him the truth first off? "And remember, she suffered from Croatoan as well this summer. It's a miracle that she's even alive." Gibbs was still confused, so Abby broke it down for him even further. "It's that demon virus; spread by blood. Makes the infected demonic and violent. No cure. Usually, you die from it if you don't spread it. Uncle Bobby came and cured her, but she nearly died from that as well. Plus, she's been working herself to exhaustion working for us and the Corps. Did you know that she still hunts on the weekend, trying to keep people safe? She's a hero!" Now Abs was babbling, but Gibbs didn't stop her.

"Why she is reacting like this?" Gibbs was worried about a demon possession, but Abby shook her head.

"It's a result of the Croatoan virus in her system. When she experiences high stress levels, the virus footprint flares up. Uncle Bobby got rid of it, yes, but her DNA will forever recognize and fight it in her system. She'll remain in the circle of salt until morning. By then, it should be better."

Gibbs wasn't quite finished with the questions. "What did she take downstairs?"

"It's a tea that Missouri made for her. It helps her to control the pain and encourages her healing. She has to drink it every few hours. It's like an instant shot of 'get better'. Her bruises are getting better at least. She has to drink it for another three weeks, then she would be good to go. The only problem is that she doesn't rest. Even when she was on vacation, she still worked." By now, Abby was crying.

Gibbs said nothing, just sat on her other side and watched over as Jack appeared to dream about something terrible. "Why didn't she tell me?"

Abby scoffed. "Gibbs, you're like her father figure. Bobby's always gone on hunts, even when we were kids. She never truly had someone to watch over her and care for her like you. I mean, Uncle Bobby's great, but he's a Marine and he raised his girl to be a soldier. Jack never took mind at it; she loved it. But when she came here, to work for you, she told me that this was the most fun ever that she has had in a long time. I mean, six years overseas? She's a machine, but now she's too tired to hide it anymore. Gibbs, you're the first person to give a damn about how she feels."

Between the two, there was silence. Both of them waited, waited for the one person on the bed to wake up.


	15. Chapter 15

Coming back to NCIS, Jack, Gibbs, and Abby refused to talk about what had happened in her house; instead, being the professionals that they were, they just continued going about their work. Jack refused to talk about anything supernatural with them, even though they kept looking at her, ever needing that proof that what she fought in her side job was real. That, and the fact that she had fainted in front of them, had them all on edge.

The cases were piling up under the new director, Leon Vance. When Director Vance came around to inspect the building, he took one look at Jack and immediately questioned her role for NCIS. He told her that a medical officer wasn't needed for a federal agency, not a working Marine that had seen wars and the injuries that this team tended to face. She just kept her lips shut and showed him the paper work from SECNAV that allowed her to work for NCIS as a medical officer in the Marine Corps. That took the proverbial color right out of his smug face. After that, the Director tended to avoid coming down to her office, leaving her in peace.

Sadly, the team was too busy to continue their discussion, but she knew that they all still had questions, despite the fact that she tried her best to send them in the right directions. However, these were questions that could wait until after the weekend. Dean and Sam had a hunt down in Richmond that they had asked for her help. Now that it was getting closer to Halloween, hunts were becoming more and more frequent. According to the boys, a guy had been killed eating taffy from a closed bag. They had found a hex-bag with some hinky stuff inside and needed another opinion. So she packed her gear and headed out after work. Leon Vance kept giving her strange looks when she emerged from the bottom level and headed out to her car. Something was up with him, but she just couldn't put her finger on it.

The drive to Richmond from DC was only two hours with some light traffic, but it was nice to get out of the city. Thanks to Missouri's tea, she was getting better. Abby still told her that she looked like shit, but that was Abby: prone to exaggeration. She knew her limits, and this hunt was within those limits. She stopped by the motel where the Impala was parked, only to be met by a surprise.

Dean and Sam were there, all right, but so were two other guys that she wasn't expecting. One was a bald African American, of slightly rotund build and bad acne on his face. His expression was that of many of the soldiers that she had worked with: it was one that said 'Don't piss me off'. The other was a slighter man with black tousled hair and piercing blue eyes. He held his hands behind his back and was talking to Dean when she walked in.

"Who are you?" The African man looked at her with a sneer on his face so similar to Vance's. "Another mud-monkey?" A pompous smirk filled the air.

Jack went to reach for her knife, but Dean stopped her. "She's a friend. I called her to help find the witch." Jack's eyebrows raised at the last word in that sentence. Witch? Oh, man! They were nasty to kill, and even nastier to deal with. Dean turned back to Trench Coat Man. "You can't destroy this town. We're talking innocents here!" Bald Guy looked disgusted, but Trench Coat stopped him from trying to take action. Before their eyes, both of them disappeared.

Jack turned to Dean, a question in her eyes and her arms crossed over her chest. Her bruises were all healed, and the scarring was almost healed as well. She would have some good-looking trophies by the time she tried out for St. Peter's Pearly Gates, but at least she had all her of limbs and all of her senses. "Dean, Sam." She nodded her head and dropped her bag by the door. She took a sip of the tea from her Thermos and looked at them. "Well, boys. What do you got for me that couldn't be discussed over the phone?"

Sam looked disappointed as he turned back to the place where the two mystery men were standing. Dean took her to the table and showed her the evidence. "Like Cas was saying before you got in, we got a witch. A powerful witch that intends on summoning Samhain." She visibly cringed at the name, both at the significance and at the horrible pronounciation. "Three blood sacrifices are needed, and only one's left. We have until tomorrow night before he gets free."

"First, it's pronounced 'Sow-win', not 'Sam-hain'." She poked through the opened hex bags, looking at the goldthread and the coin, not touching the child's jaw bone. "He's a demon from old Celtic lore. He is particularly partial to this time of year, because its gives him easy access to kill and wreak chaos. The only reason for this because it's a time when the veil between our world and Hell is weaker, letting demons come much more easier and possess people. That's why people wear masks and costumes; it's to hide their true face from him and protect them from his killing spree." She looked at them both. "You should be okay with your anti-possession tats, but be careful. If he gets loose, then you have to send him back to Hell as quick as possible. Here." She tossed them a copy of a few pages from one of her oldest books. "That exorcism is the full Ritual Romanum. It should do the trick. You guys know the shortened version, but it's not wise to skip corners with one of Hell's bigger baddies." She looked around at the dank motel room. "If that's everything, you guys have some explaining to do." She shot a look at both of them, making them squirm where they stood. "Who the hell were those two guys that just disappeared in front of my eyes, and why did baldie call me a mud monkey?"

Dean looked abashed. "Jack, do you remember the angel that dragged me out of Hell?" She nodded; how could she have forgotten anything from that day? "Well, his name is Castiel."

"Castiel... also known as Cassiel, reputedly one of seven archangels in the Heavens; associated with Saturn in mysticism, as well as solitude and tears. It is said that he resides over the deaths of kings." She motioned with her hand for him to continue, but then it hit her. "Wait... _that _was Castiel?" Her eyes bulged out of her head. "A real honest-to-God angel?"

"Yep." Dean kept looking at her as if she was going to collapse to the ground again. But she didn't. She just closed her eye, took a breath, and then let it out.

"And who's the other killjoy?" She looked over to Sam. "Another angel?"

Sam nodded. "Castiel is his superior. His name is Uriel. He is a 'specialist'."

Jack nodded her head. "For good reason. He leads the seraphim. Sodom and Gomorrah? That was his work. According to myth, he is another one of the archangels, but he's supposed to be Cassiel's superior." She shrugged her shoulders. "Old monks probably messed up in the transcription of the hierarchy somehow." Dean was surprised at the outright blasphemy of his girlfriend, but she sounded quite blase about the whole angel issue. She caught that look of his, and peered at him. "What? When I say I believe in angels, I do. It's not that hard to believe: if demons exist, why not angels? It's just... this is the first time that I've met one face-to-face." She scoffed. "Never thought they'd be dicks, though."

She looked around, and left the motel room. Well, that was a wasted trip. Dean came after her. "Jack, wait!" She paused by the car. "Won't you help us out with the hunt?" He looked almost desperately at her, but she looked back at him as she shook her head.

"Sorry, Dean. I got to work tomorrow. If my boss sees me with any more bruises or broken bones, then I'm out of a job. Then what? The only options that I have after that is to either work at Quantico base or sign up for another tour. I'm two years away from my last possible promotion, and I intend to make it to it. If I lose this job, what's left for me? Go back to hunting _gratias_ for no pay?" She shook her head. "Man, Dean. I'm a researcher for the hunting community. I don't do many active jobs anymore." She was now the one sounding desperate. "It's been nice seeing you, Dean, but I got a life now. If you need some lore, or an ear to listen to you, then call me up. But I can't hunt anymore." She closed her eyes, turning back to her car. She paused for a moment, kissed him on the forehead, and then drove back home to Washington.

* * *

That evening, she lounged on her couch and drank whiskey. She was probably on her fourth full glass by now, but she didn't care. She had nothing left anymore to be happy for. Hunting was nothing but a pastime, a memory, something for her friends to mock her when she got back to work. Her life with the Marines was good, but not good enough; a successful eight year career, working hard enough and proving herself enough to become a master sergeant, but at the great risk of killing herself as proven during the last SERE expedition.

"Why?" She reached for her knife on instinct, but stopped when she saw the angel from earlier standing at her window, inside of the salt barriers. "Why did you come to Richmond, Jacklyn, if not to help Dean Winchester?"

She sighed; angels were nothing but dicks. "He doesn't need my help to kill a witch. I don't hunt, not anymore." She finished off her glass, and glared at the angel out of the corner of her eye. "Castiel, right?" He nodded. "Get the hell out of my house."

"Jacklyn, what if I told you that God has a plan for you?" She stopped on her way to the staircase, letting his words sink in. "He does, you know."

"What is it?" She was too drunk to care about the niceties of being polite to angels.

"He has ordained that you help the Winchesters to stop the Devil from rising from his prison." She leaned against the wall. The liquor was dulling her senses, but she still had her wit about her.

"So it's true, then. The six hundred, sixty-six seals? Lilith being the last seal to be broken? All of it?" Castiel turned to her and nodded. "So the Apocalypse is going to happen, then. The whole burning of the world?" This time, he shook his head. Her mind went back to what Pastor Jim and John told her: don't trust the angels. "So, if I help Dean and Sam? What? I get a pat on the back? A 'good job, Jack'?" She laughed a bit as she fell to the ground. "That's not good enough."

The angel stood before her and she glared up at him through her eyebrows. "What about your faith, Jacklyn? Does it not compel you to help?"

That got a good drunken laugh from her. "Faith? That's a joke. I haven't believed in God since I was three. When that demon took over my Mom. Where the hell was God? Does he not care what this world's coming to? He doesn't. This world's already in the shit-hole. Nothing I do can stop it." She slowly got to her feet again. "Get out of my house. I don't ever wanna see your face again. Understand? I don't want anything to do with angels. I'm a hunter, that's it. Not a chess piece for your God." She spat at his feet. "Get out... of my house."


	16. Chapter 16

Jacklyn kept to herself as she finally devoted the time to get healed, at least physically. At work, she was laconic among her co-workers, constantly found sipping from a thermos of either tea or coffee. For every question that the team asked, every time that they asked if she was fine or okay, she would just clench her jaw and ignore them. She stopped answering the memos sent to her about policy changes or replying to Abby's worried text messages. She closed herself in, Jack Daniel's becoming her best friend.

No more Dean... She kept twisting his ring on her finger, remembering the feel of his amulet around her neck. She had basically told him to leave her be, to let her to the life that she had carved out for herself. And yet, she was throwing it all away: all of the connections and the social network that she had spend the early part of her life building. Bobby wasn't talking to her anymore: he was too busy helping the brothers out. Missouri wouldn't speak to her until she got her act together. Gibbs and the team were so constantly worried about her that it was giving her a headache. She had to find something to do to occupy her mind...

About a week after she helped out with the Samhain case, she found it: the thing to keep her busy. She was a researcher in the occult; hell, she was an expert in the occult, albeit from no accredited source. And yet, it took her learning Latin, Sumerian, other languages, mythos, histories, before she felt that she was competent enough to be called 'expert'. One of the local colleges was offering courses on the history of magic, science, and religion. If that was a coincidence, then she would eat her foot. Those correspondence courses had her name written all over them. So, she signed up for the courses and got the reading list requirements. All she needed was a working computer and an email address, and she could learn this from anywhere in the world.

On the same day as her first online seminar, there was a surprise visitor to the NCIS building. Jack didn't really pay attention to the 'who' component of the discussion: she spent her day cleaning up the infirmary to make sure that it was ship-shape for the guest. Gibbs was snarkier than normal: that indicated that it must have been some high-up brass. She was locking away her files in her drawer when a shadow crossed her threshold.

"So this is the elusive Master Sergeant Jacklyn Singer." A voice, obviously educated and cultured, rang out from behind her. She slowly turned, making sure to move her knife on her uniform's utility belt. A Causasian man, probably in his fifties, stood in her threshold, looking around at her office. His bald head shone in the dim light, but his brown eyes were keen. A slight grin was on his face as he fiddled with a cigar in one hand. By the cut of his Italian suit and the shine of his leather shoes, this was a man that demanded respect and attention. Luckily, Jack knew who the man was. When she was overseas, some of the troops would have a rule when buying drinks when they were on temporary leave: they would show a coin given to them from the highest ranking person that they had ever met. Needless to say, she never had to buy drinks.

"Mr. Secretary." She saluted smartly to him, her body ramrod straight and stiff. "Pleasure to meet you, sir."

"Same." Philip Davenport, the Secretary of the Navy, walked around after casually returning the salute; she saw the Secret Service agent standing at her door trying to be discretely. "You have become quite a commodity to have among this agency."

She stood straight, not at attention but close to. "How so, sir?"

He chuckled once. "Well, your Director seems to believe that you would serve other branches of NCIS well, what with your service record and your work record. No accidents, no incidents." Jack tried not to raise an eyebrow. It looks like Gibbs didn't report the Autopsy incident after all. "A couple of injuries off the job, two weeks of personal time taken to recover. However, that scandal with the SERE instructor..."

"Was nothing of my doing, sir." She interrupted, despite her training screaming at her not to. "With respect, sir, I was simply there to get my beta level training, sir. There was nothing more to it, sir. What the instructor saw in me was of his own thoughts, sir."

"I was going to say that it was an unfortunate display of psychotic behaviour. Apparently, that behaviour had gone on for a while, and yet you were the first to report it." SECNAV stared at her with a look in his eyes; he was reading her, gauging her reactions.

"Speaking frankly, sir, he tried to kill me during training with his... extreme methods. Of course, I would report him, sir." She stood against the bed, looking around. "But sir... I have the feeling that you didn't come down here to coffee-shop with a Marine, sir."

"True." He looked over to the Secret Service agent and dismissed him with a nod of his head. He leaned on the counter with her computer, looking right at her. "I have come into a situation that requires your... expertise." Jack felt her face go white; she wanted to reach for the hilt of her knife, something to fiddle with as SECNAV put the unused cigar back in his pocket.

"Sir, to what are you referring to?"

"Why, your medical training, Master Sergeant." SECNAV looked at her funnily. "There's a temporary position being made available for you in the Office of Special Projects stationed out of Los Angeles. You've been reassigned there until June. That's time enough for Vance to get used to you working for NCIS." He looked at her as he stood up. "I made a special case of you, Master Sergeant, as a favour to an old friend. Don't make me regret it." He handed over her transfer papers from his inside jacket pocket. "You leave in three days." With that, he left.

It took a moment for Jack to process this. She was being transferred, but to Los Angeles? The sunny city itself? On the other side of the country from her troubles? She smiled. If this wasn't a sign, then she was nuts! She walked up to the bullpen, just in time to see SECNAV leave with his disgruntled Secret Service agent trailing behind him. Tony saw the papers in her hand and he waved her over to the group meeting.

"What's happening, Jack?" Tony flashed his charming smile. This time, she let his charm roll off of her and looked at Gibbs.

"I've been reassigned." Those three words got quite a stir. Abby was turning red and angry at the thought of losing her friend yet again. McGee and Tony looked at her with confusion. Ziva simply cocked an eyebrow. Gibbs looked right at her with those piercing blue eyes. She waved them down as Gibbs took her papers away. "To OSP in Los Angeles until June." The smile that she had on her face was enough to make everyone pause for a moment. "Guys, I want this. This is a good thing."

Abby signed to her. _But Jack... why do you have to leave?_

"One, because the SECNAV ordered me to. Second, because I need to leave DC for a while. Maybe this will cheer me up from my down-spell." She hugged each one of them. "Don't worry: I'm not cutting you guys off. I'll write. You can always find me." She turned to Gibbs. "Besides, I wouldn't want to break your rules, would I, Gibbs?" He grinned a bit before nodding to her.

"You had better start packing." They both nodded to each other as she walked back down to the infirmary to read over her orders. There would be a set up for her down in Los Angeles, but she would need to bring all of her supplies from here. Well, that was easy enough to pack up. She still had the storage boxes in the corner of the room: she just repacked them again. It was quiet, for once, down in the bellows of NCIS. Normally, she would be able to hear the case work through the vent systems, but that wasn't the case today. She still had to come to work tomorrow, but it would be to finish up any last minute paperwork. She took out the dolley from Autopsy's storage closet and carried the three boxes out to her Camaro.

As soon as she came home, she took out her mudcloth duffel from the Corps, her name stamped proudly on it, and packed up her clothes and her kits. She was going to be living in Los Angeles for the next half of a year. The last time that she spent more than two weeks time in a climate whose temperature was average 65 degrees Fahrenheit year round was when she was in Iraq for six years. This just might be... fun. The one thing that she worried about was her arms room. She moved the case once again and took a few pieces with her, placing them in her metal case for her guns and knives. There was no way in Hell that she was spending any time anywhere without some protection. Holy water was easy enough to make when she got to Los Angeles. She also tucked in a few of her journals and some of her more all-purpose tomes in the duffel. In her carry-on, she tucked in her music, a new book (_The Paradise War_ by Stephen Lawhead), her lab-top and a few movies, and a set of clothes to change in after passing through Customs.

When she was finished, she put her keys on her key chain, keeping the key to the infirmary with her. She nailed her bookcase in place to make sure that no one could find her weapons room; the biometric lock took care of entrance, but one couldn't be too careful. Her furniture was covered in dust-cloths, and her bookcases were covered as well. As a measure of good luck, she sipped some of her tea and smiled.

* * *

She arrived at the Quantico base the next day with a jump on her step and a smile on her face. She spent most of her time in Administration, updating her service record and filling out the necessary paperwork for a transfer. After that, she headed over to NCIS and their Administration building. Using a spare computer, she got her bills to be payable on line, so she could still pay off her mortgage and her cell, but she had to get a new ID made for her for her transfer to OSP. This also involves getting a higher security clearance; she was covered right now up to 'confidential', and she needed to get at least 'top secret' in order to work at OSP just to cover her ass if someone spilled anything in her care. Luckily, Administration and Legal weren't that busy today, and she was able to get it all done over the course of seven hours via the wonders of email. Apparently, the SECNAV had already upped her security clearance to 'top secret'; Jack had to admit that for all of his scary demeanour, the SECNAV meant business and no loose ends were allowed.

As she left with all of her affairs straightened, she passed her house keys to Abby, signing to her to take care of her place for her. In a moment of possibly unclear judgment, she passed the keys to her beloved Camaro to Tony and her motorcycle to Ziva, with the caveat that they take care of those vehicles carefully, but they can use it at their will. She took one last look around the building, saying her goodbyes to the team. Tomorrow, she would board her early morning flight. Goodbye, Washington DC... hello, Los Angeles!

* * *

As she walked off the airplane, there was a ride and an agent waiting for her: a big African-American man stood holding a sign with her name. His bald head shone in the bright light of the airport lights as she collected her belongings from inspection. She began her work today, and she was going straight into the lion's den.

"Jack Singer?" The man asked as she walked towards him.

"Yeah." She shook his hand, finding the grip strong and sure.

"Name's Sam Hanna. Come with me."


	17. Chapter 17

Gibbs and McGee arrived at the OSP headquarters about an hour after their flight landed in Los Angeles International. The new director, Leon Vance, wanted them to join teams with the OSP division to solve the case that they were currently working on. McGee was still nervous about how he had acted during the flight; he had tried his best to make small talk with his boss, just like Tony had advised him to do. Gibbs, on the other hand, had slept the whole way, ignoring all of his probie's well-meant attempts. However, both of them were thinking about the same thing as they came nearer to their destination: Jack.

It had been little over seven months since her re-assignment to OSP. Like she promised, she kept in touch with them through both regular hand-written letters and phone calls. Abby called her nearly every night to check up on her. By the sounds of it, she was flourishing here. She couldn't tell them about some of the cases that she had worked with, but she was wiling to share adventures that came from living in Los Angeles. Still, everyone missed her, even if she was with them for only a few months. Jack would be rotating back to them in one more month, but both agents were looking forward to seeing their friend.

They were welcomed at the door by a woman named Kensi Blye. With a blithe smile, she escorted them up through the innocuous-looking warehouse and into the building cleverly hidden from prying eyes. They entered the comm room, their bags still in hand, when they saw the Director having a conversation with Macy, the senior agent in charge of the operations. There was no sign of Jack, though...

"Gibbs!" The Director called him out. "I expect you to work with Agent Macy on this, together." Everyone felt the emphasis on that last word, especially the two senior agents. "I need this case solved, and quickly."

"Of course, Director." Macy answered for all of them as she turned off the screen and her mike. She turned to Gibbs, a somewhat smile on her face. "You can bunk in the beach house with the master sergeant. I trust that your flight was satisfactory?" Everyone felt the coldness between the two of them, the bitterness. Gibbs refused to answer the question, instead heading back out to the door.

"I'll take them there, Mace." A tall gangly man with curly short brown hair turned to them. "I gotta find Callen anyway." He turned to the Washington agents and reached out to shake their hands. "Nate Getz. Resident operational psychologist." He motioned for the two of them to follow him back out to their car. "Don't worry," he said as they raced down the freeway, "Mace'll warm up to you eventually."

It was about a twenty-five minute drive to Long Beach and from there to the pier. Nate did most of the talking to fill up the time; McGee listened and added small things when it came to discussing their teams. Gibbs was silent the whole way, only nodding and grunting where Nate pointed the way. He listened in on the conversation; not once did this Nate person mention Jack. When they finally arrived, Nate typed in a keypad code and walked into a beach house sitting right on the pier. They were welcomed, not by the sounds of laughter and voices, but two grown men yelping and one woman scolding them.

"Next time you two boneheads go on assignment, don't go bursting into a glass factory!" Gibbs grinned a bit at that familiar voice. All three of them turned a corner and saw two agents lying on a table with a familiar woman standing above them. Both agents bit their lips as the woman meticulously cleaned out glass shards from their arms. "Running through windows? Guys, come on! That Hollywood crap isn't real! They use spun sugar for their stunt windows, not the real thing." Right now, she put the tweezers down and began to wrap up their arms with thick bandages.

Something rang, and she touched a bloody gloved finger to her ear. "Singer, here." There was a pause as she continued her work. "Yeah, Hetty, they'll be fine. Just give them desk duty for the next two weeks or so. They won't be able to hide the bandages until after that." There was another pause. "Don't worry, Hetty, I didn't bruise them too badly." She chuckled and listened. "Yeah, I know they're here. They're standing right behind me. Ciao, Hetty." She touched a finger to her ear again. "Gibbs, McGee, nice to see you guys again." She looked over her shoulder before discharging her patients. "Hetty wants you guys back at the office; desk jockey assignment for the next two weeks. Come back here when that's over, and I'll see if maybe you're up for field work again. Now, scat." The two agents left in a hurry, leaving her alone with Nate and her old work-buddies.

She had definitely changed since they saw her last November. Her hair was longer now: tied off from the nape of her neck in a little horsetail. Her eyes were warmer; the scar through her left eye was barely noticeable through her grin. As she walked forward to greet her old buddies, the khaki cargo pants concealed her almost-healed scars from sight. The white tank top that she was currently wearing showed off most of her tattoos, as well as a brand new one: Gibbs saw it only for a moment, but he recognized some of the Latin in the phrase on her left bicep as she slipped into a worn dark blue blouse.

"It's good to see you, guys!" She looked around, looking concerned when she didn't find what she was looking for. "You two the only ones to come?"

"Yep." She didn't seem disappointed at McGee's answer, but maybe a little let down.

"You're here for the Walkman case, right?" Both of them nodded as she grabbed a case file from a locked cupboard. Her office was about the same size as the one back in Washington that was still waiting for her return. It had room for a bed, a chair, a cupboard for her medical supplies and equipment, and a table with a computer and coffee machine. "Nate, you can go now. Do your shrink thing on me later." Nate smiled and left, taking the spare car back to the office. "Guys, the rooms are upstairs. Pick an empty one. Mace won't expect you in until tomorrow. By then, you can get all caught up with her work on the case."

"So, Jack, what's been happening with you?" She grinned a bit before sitting against her table. Gibbs pulled up a seat while McGee settled for the tables that the agents had just vacated.

"Lots of things. SECNAV reassigned me to here, and here I came. I work under Hetty Lang, the mission operator for OSP. You probably won't meet her, McGee. Mace isn't my superior, but I work with her team mostly since they are the most active in the field. Some of the other agents are showing potential for field work, and when they get injured, they come here. I do everything: bullet wounds, knife wounds, glass accidents. Anything that these guys do to themselves and don't want a hospital to know, especially if they're under deep cover. Mace's team is the worst at getting injured: Callen and Sam especially, being the senior agents. Kensi, not so much." She placed the file on her work table and looked at them with a content smile.

"Hey, Jack. Do you know where Callen is?" She nodded her head as Gibbs cocked a brow at her. "Wanna tell me?"

"Callen knows you're here, Gunny. He'll find you." She rubbed the back of her neck. "How is everyone? Tony and Ziva have been pretty quiet for the last couple of weeks. Haven't gotten much scuttlebutt from them."

"Ziva went to Tel Aviv over the winter; she had to do some work for her father. Tony is... Tony's doing okay." McGee squirmed a bit as Jack cocked an eyebrow at him. "He's serial-dating, Jack. What else?" At that, she nodded her head. "But what about you?" McGee saw the ring on her finger. "How's..." Now he got really nervous. Jack stood up and looked at him like he was about to keel over. "How's Dean?"

"Ah..." She leaned back as the redness tripled in McGee's face. "After I left Washington, he came down here and found me, wanting an explanation for the last case we worked together. We fought, we kissed, we made up. He and his brother come about once a month to check up on me." She clapped her hands together. "I'm hungry. Unpack, and I'll show you guys around the town. Gibbs," she turned to him as he walked away, "if you want real coffee and not that ultra-sweet crap that people seem to live on in this state, my coffee pot's your only safe bet." With that, she shooed them out of her office, pointing them up to the stairs to drop their stuff off. She felt McGee watching her as she headed into a different room: her own little apartment, courtesy of Hetty. The little formidable woman had taken a liking to the battle-hardened Marine and gave her one of the unused rooms in the beach house to call her own while she was stationed here.

For Jack, being stationed here was the opportunity of a lifetime. There were tons of military installations in this state, and she made and enforced stronger connections with the men that she had worked with during SERE. The several SEALs that she had worked with, whose backs she had watched, were stationed at Coronado. They helped her to stay connected with the Deltas and Rangers out of Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Since California was the hub of the Western US military command, it was easy for her to keep track of her contacts. All of the men that she worked with in SERE told her that if she ever needed anything to call them up. Hopefully, she never would need to do that, but it was still a good habit to collect numbers and favours in case of extenuating circumstances. All in all, she was really glad that SECNAV had transferred her here. But soon, she would go back to Washington, and back to Team Gibbs. That, too, wouldn't be so bad.

* * *

The next day found Jack doing her morning run along the Pacific shore line. She always woke up early and ran, whether if she was in Washington or Los Angeles; she found that it helped her to focus for the day to come. Today, she had a companion: Dean. He had come down two days ago, and today was his last day in the city before going back to San Diego to solve an open case. Sam was in the beach house, as was his wont. He seemed stranger than normal, though: always watching his back like something was stalking him. He was stronger, too, but more angry than before.

"Jacky." Dean called her out before they reached the beach house. She smiled and turned to him to watch the smile widen on his face. "You know what I have to do, don't you?"She nodded to him.

"Just don't kill them over-dramatically, Dean. I only got a month left here, and so very little supernatural activity that's hit the news. I hope that my stay here goes quietly, not with a bang." He tugged her closer and they kissed on the sunrise-lit beach. God, she missed him so much.

"Can't make no promises, Jacky. But I'll try." They both smiled and headed into the beach house. Sam was reading the_ National Post_, but she saw that his bag was all packed. "Sammy, let's go."

"All right." Sam walked over and hugged Jack, careful that Dean was watching. "We'll see you at Bobby's house soon, right, Jack?"

"Of course, Sam! Now get! Gibbs is here, and McGee's got questions about the two of you." They left like ghosts: silently. Still, the purr of the Impala made her sigh: it was good to be her right now.

"Jack!" That was Gibbs, not even a few minutes after she got out of her shower. She chuckled and poured out two cups of coffee and placed one in front of her old boss. She had her back turned to him as she tucked her knife in its holster and pulled her shirt down over it. She could hear both agents coming down the stairs. "Come on, we got work to do!"

"Right, Gibbs." She shook her head and tucked her sunglasses in place as she picked up her shoulder bag that served as both a emergency medical kit and a hunter's survival kit. "Come on: I need some breakfast, and Mace isn't in for another hour." She slid into the driver seat of the Mustang convertible that Hetty was loaning her for her stay here. "I know a good place down in Long Beach." The agents walked into the car and sat quietly; Jack just shook her head and chuckled. These two were definitely not morning people. She stopped at her favorite shack, the one that Callen and Sam introduced her to. She didn't pause much; just hopped out of the car, got some of Randy's breakfast wraps and eggs, and walked back out to her car. She split the wraps and eggs between them as she pulled out the case file.

"So, what are we lookin' at, Jack?" Gibbs was surprised at how easy-going she was. Back in Washington, she was quite personable, but he rarely heard her laugh or crack a joke. But here, it was like she was a whole new person.

"I don't talk shop over breakfast, Gibbs." She drank back her coffee. "Besides, it's not secure here."

"Wasn't talking about the case." He pointed a finger at the newest tattoo. "What's the art?" She moved her arm to get a look at it and to show it to McGee. It was the same, albeit smaller, script as her other arm, but this was in Latin: C_arpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero. _"I know the _Carpe diem_, but what's the rest of it?"

She looked quite serious as she rubbed her hands on her jeans, before slipping into her unbuttoned blouse. "It's the full original phrase from Horace. It means, 'Seize the day, and place no trust in tomorrow'." Both men were silent as they comprehended what that meant. "It reminds me not to take each day for granted, because who knows what tomorrow may bring." With that, she started up the car.

"Jack, tell us about the case, then." McGee was squirming in the back of his seat as she zoomed down the freeway to the OSP office with almost careless abandon. It was similar, almost eerily similar, to Gibbs' driving, in that both of their driving techniques gave him heart palpitations.

"Corporal Harold Walkman, deployed from San Diego, lived in Los Angeles. He had a spotless record with the Marine Corps, until local LEOs found his mutilated body three days ago. We suspected some kind of gang affiliation at first; maybe a bad run-in with the local Crips. Anyway, that lead didn't pan out because Walkman had been in contact with the man that you guys have been looking for: Sergeant Steven Dawson from Walkman's unit. They were deployed together, but Dawson definitely has the criminal record from before the Corps. We found bank and phone records that suggest that Walkman was paying Dawson for something, but we don't know what. You've been brought in because the Dawson case is under Washington NCIS purview. Also, it's because the Director feels that OSP and NCIS needs more... inter-agency communication between each other." Gibbs saw her knuckles tighten against the wheel. "Me: you guys are the hard-working mooks, and OSP is the fun-loving spooks." She chuckled and parked under the office. "Come on up." She led them through the bellows of OSP into the main comm room. She nodded to Nate and walked over to Sam, leaving McGee and Gibbs with Mace. "So, Sam, any word from G?"

"Nah, but he'll show." Sam pointed his chin over to the agents. "They good people, Jack?"

"Yeah." She turned her head and looked at Gibbs for a moment. "The Gunny and the probie are good people." She nodded to him and sat down, removing her Bluetooth and settling a microphone over her head. As a medical officer, Hetty allowed her to sit in on missions so that she could monitor the assets and their agents and advise them on how not to get unnecessarily hurt. Most of the time, she was listened to. What she didn't tell Gibbs was that sometimes, she had gone undercover herself in medical situations where they needed to infiltrate hospitals or clinics for information. When Hetty helped her to get dressed for those kinds of situations, she looked real professional, unlike now. But right now, her mind was on the mission at hand.

Kensi was in play at a local cafe where Sergeant Steven Dawson was known to visit during the week. She was in as a waitress, playing it cool with Dawson until G would come and pick the guy up for questioning. Easy, no sweat. Callen was usually late to the parties, but he would show. He never missed his mark. All was well and good until Jack saw something on the screen that made her face turn white. What the hell was Dean and Sam doing in that cafe? She couldn't say a word, but she knew that Gibbs and McGee recognized them as well. They walked in, sat down near Dawson, and chatted too quietly between the two of them for the microphones to pick up. Dawson left just as Callen came in, and the Winchesters followed their man out.

"Eric, find me some info on those guys. Why are they following Dawson?" Mace was livid. Jack simply began to swear in Latin over the mic. What the hell were those guys up to? "Callen, Kensi, follow those men and Dawson. We need him alive!"

That order came too little, and too late. Callen and Kensi caught up to the Winchesters all right, standing over the still-warm corpse of Corporal Dawson; there were two slugs in his heart. Following protocol, Sam and Dean were arrested and brought to the beach-house. When Jack saw the news, she left the comm room and headed to the beach-house as fast as she could. Besides serving as her office, it was the interrogation rooms for OSP with direct feeds to Hetty, the Director, and the FBI as soon as they found out. This was a disaster, but it was one that she would try her best to avoid coming to term.

She bumped into Callen as he locked the Winchesters in separate rooms. "Callen, I need speak with those guys!"

"Why?"

"Because they're my brothers!" That certainly got his attention...

* * *

Gibbs and McGee were surprised when they saw Dean and Sam at the cafe, but they were even more surprised when Jack ripped out of there without even a word to the others. Had she known that they were here, or was it a surprise to her as well? Mace was still screaming at a guy named Eric to find her and more information on these suspects. The big black guy was looking around the computer screens as he replayed the contact. What the hell was happening here? They, too, discretely stripped off their mikes and slipped out the back. As soon as Gibbs got behind the wheel, they zoomed down that freeway so fast that not even the red light cameras could pick them up. However, when they got to the beach house and to the interrogation area, Callen wouldn't let them by.

"Gunny, I can't!" He literally pushed Gibbs away from the door. "She's family, and it checks out."

"What?" McGee was flabbergasted. "She's got no connections with them!"

"Not according to her record. She's the next-of-kin to both of these guys. She had the paperwork. Don't look at me like that, Gunny!" Callen glared at Gibbs as he tried to pummel him with a icy gaze. "She's still ours for another month! And we take care of our own!" All the while the argument took place, Jack sat across from Dean and Sam. The video in the comm center wasn't at the best of angles, but she didn't care at this point. They were on record at the scene of a murder of a wanted NCIS suspect. For now, she had Eric holding the fingerprint scan from going through. If that went through, then they were totally screwed. FBI would hover on this place until they got handed the case out of sheer frustration.

"Jack, we didn't do it!" Dean lifted his handcuffed hands up. "This is overkill. He was dead when we got to the alley."

"I know. I couldn't hear the gunshots from where I was. But still, I need your guns." Both of them whined over losing their guns. "Listen! My job is on the line here, boys! I'm connected with you four ways past Sunday! As soon as they run your fingerprints, you and I are both screwed! Now, relax, cooperate, and give me the guns." She held out two evidence bags, one for each. "They can hold you here for a day without cause, and that's Callen's plan. Now I suggest you boneheads call this number and get yourself a damn good lawyer." She wrote down a number and passed it to them. "He owes a favour: his son was in SERE with me, and I saved that damn kid's bacon a few times. Until he shows up, don't say anything. Got it?"

She came out of the room to watch Callen and Gibbs in a heated shouting match, with Kensi keeping an eye on McGee. She quietly closed the door and whistled as loud as she could. "HEY!" That got everyone to shut up. "These two men have used their right to remain silent until a lawyer comes, and they want to use their phone call." She turned on Kensi and Callen. "Guys, do you even know if they did it before you arrested them? I didn't hear any gunshots from where I was standing, nor did I see them with guns in their hands when you found them maybe a split second too late." She looked mad at everyone. "Now shut up, and let Forensics run these." She placed the guns on the table. "My brothers would like to clear their name of this... misunderstanding. Now, excuse me." She shoved past them all and started up the car. "Gibbs, McGee, come on!"

Within ten minutes, they arrived at the comm center. Mace was furious with her, coming about an inch too close for comfort. "What the hell, Singer? You don't leave in the middle of an op, and you know it! Just because you're Hetty's pet project doesn't mean that you got the balls to make here in OSP!" She was screaming like a spoiled child, having a temper tantrum in front of the agents assembled. Jack just took it quietly and without reaction.

"Are you finished, Mace?" When there was a pause in the rant, Jack took over. "First of all, you will address me as Master Sergeant Singer before you do something that you regret. Secondly, I am not Hetty's pet project. I was assigned here by the SECNAV. If you don't like it, take it with him. I've been here for almost a year, Mace. Trust me, I never asked to be here either. Third, I think that family trumps work. Those two men that you arrested without cause are my brothers, Mace!" Jack had this flabbergasted look on her face as Mace turned from red to white to gray. "So I can sue your asses from here to Sunday for breaches of conduct, but I'm not. Instead, I'm gonna clear their names, and then spend the next month remaining in my rotation at the beach house or with Hetty. No more ops, no more missions, no more doing your dirty work. Let Nate do it: he itches for undercover assignments. Either way, I don't give a damn to the fact that you think you own my ass! Respectfully, you can go screw yourself, Mace. I don't play nice with people that threaten my family. Now who has all the balls?" Jack's rant was much more impressive than Mace's because she was able to do it calmly, but still with the same amount of anger behind her voice. As she sat down at a computer and began to type, she stared around the room and at the still and shocked agents. "What?" That got everyone back to work.

She was typing madly at the keyboard in front of her, going over the footage once again. It was for sure: Dean and Sam didn't fire those shots. They weren't the killers. They were just witnesses. Her email dinged: the ballistics report came back. Both of the guns were not a match for the slugs pulled from the body. From what Callen was saying through her earpiece, Sam and Dean had called the number and had a lawyer present with them; they were answering no questions, not saying a word. Good: that bought her some time.

Gibbs and McGee watched discretely at the fervor with which Jack worked. She had changed in her posting here: she never would have stood up to anyone like that back in Washington. Instead, she would have let it roll off of her before trying to help out those who needed it. Maybe it was just Mace that was annoying her, but she was far more driven, more in the moment, more involved.

"Jack!" Sam came up to her and tapped her on the shoulder. "You can let your brothers go. They're innocent. However, we need them here."

Her eyebrows furrowed. "Why?"

"Because Mace wants to talk to them, personally." He looked at her, holding his hands up in front of him. "She wants to apologize to all three of you." That had her eyebrow shooting up to her hairline.

"I'll tell G that. He and Kensi are babysitting them at the beach house." Jack placed the Bluetooth on her ear and waited for Callen to pick up. "Callen, bring the Winchesters to the ops center. Mace wants to speak to them." She paused for a moment. "Yeah, take the cuffs off them. The evidence vouches for them; they're innocent." She tapped the 'off' button and logged off the computer. She ran her fingers through her hair and exhaled a deep breath. Now that her boyfriend and his brother were free and clear, what the hell were they doing in the alley anyway?

It took Callen and Kensi only twenty minutes to get here. They escorted Dean and Sam to the entrance of Mace's office and let them in. Jack was sitting in a chair in the corner, watching Mace get nervous for the first time in a long time. She had a good poker face, but her nervous tell was showing: a slightly raised right eyebrow and shallow breathing. She probably didn't even realize that it was happening. "Gentlemen, NCIS offers its apologies for your arrest. It was without cause and without basis." Jack could hear Mace grinding her teeth as she choked on the apology. "However, I must ask what you were you doing in that alley."

"Mace!" Dean and Sam turned and saw Jack glaring at the agent in charge. It wasn't just a glare; it was like a death stare. They turned back to Mace and saw her sucking in air and dismissing the three of them with a wave of her hand.

"Master Sergeant Singer!" Jack turned and faced Mace. "Remember your promise." She nodded and pushed the brothers out of the door and back down to her Mustang.

"Guys, get out of California. Go back to Bobby." She placed a finger on Dean's mouth to stop him from talking. "Forget the job in San Diego. I'll take care of it." She looked at them as she gave out the order. "Go get the Impala and go back to South Dakota." She looked at them pleadingly. "Guys, I'll see you guys in a month." She drove them back to the cafe, and watched them drive off into the east.

* * *

The month passed tensely between Jack and Mace. Like Jack had promised, she stuck to her medic duties. The main team of Callen, Sam, Kensi, and Renko, as well as Hetty, Nate, and Eric still hung out with her after work. But as she promised, she never stepped another foot inside of the ops center.

Gibbs and McGee had left back for Washington two days after the whole explosion between the special agent in charge of operations and the master sergeant serving as the medical officer. The case was a sealed and shut deal: Dawson was being paid by Walkman to distribute drugs, and he was the fall guy of their operations. It was quite successful until Walkman welshed on the payments. Dawson killed Walkman and was on the run. He had kept papers on everything, possible blackmail against Walkman that explained everything. However, Dawson suicided in the alley when he felt that the authorities were getting too close. Dean and Sam were simply there because that alley was a shortcut back to where they had parked their car.

It was the last day of her rotation, and Jack had packed up everything in her Marine duffel and the same carry-on that she had brought on her way here. It was time to head back to Washington. Her cellphone now had the numbers of Hetty, Callen, Sam, Renko, and Nate amidst all the hunters and military contacts that she had. Los Angeles was a wonderful city, but it was time to go back. She stopped by headquarters and returned everything to Hetty: her OSP credentials, the passcode to the beach-house, and the keys to the Mustang that Hetty had allowed her to borrow. There were no words from the diminuitive woman about her leaving, say that she left like a true spook: without a trace. She had paid for her red-eye plane ticket in cash and boarded her plane in less than two hours waiting time. She slept most of the trip back to Washington DC, waking only in a bit of powerful turbulence. Man, she missed traveling in the C-17s from her active-duty days: they may have been rough rides, but they had a sense of security about them that these commerical jets lacked in spades.

She hailed a taxi to take her to the Navy Yard from the airport. It was the beginning of a new work day, and she missed Washington. She collected her ID badge from Administration and headed down nice and early to catch up on her work. None of the team was there yet; so she would surprise them with her arrival. After hauling the boxes of medical supplies back to her infirmary, she logged in to her computer and began to organize her life again. She found a small sheet of paper that bore orders on it, printed off yesterday. Apparently, Vance thought that she was doing a fine job from what he had heard from Hetty, and had decreased her workload back down to its original state of caring for Gibbs' teams primarily. The yearly check-ups for the team was coming up soon. That was going to be a fun time.

She walked over to Abby's lab, a cup of coffee from her personal machine in hand. Time to go back to work...


	18. Chapter 18

It was la bittersweet homecoming when Jack returned to work back in Washington. When she returned to Abby's lab, she saw on the far wall that her beloved friend had begun a picture wall of her, complete with a small square that counted the days that she was gone in Los Angeles. She had never lost the ability to walk silently, so when Abby turned and saw Jack standing there misty-eyed, she screamed in either shock or excitement at the physical sight of Jack. Her healed ribs cracked in protest when Abby hugged her and screamed at the sight of her, yelling for joy.

However, the team had changed without her. It was like she was a benevolent stranger among them. Only Gibbs, Abby, and Ducky were the same. Gibbs still drank his coffee, still expected the best from her. Abby was still hyped up on CafPow! and was far too energetic for a normal person. Ducky was still spouting his stories about his varied adventures over a cold body on the autopsy table. But the others...

Tony was not as thrilled with her return. Things were never the same between them since she told the team that she was a hunter. Before, he would laugh with her, try to cheer her up or not-so-subtly try to seduce her with his Italian words and rugged charm. Now, he still smiled and acted like his normal boyish self, but he seemed darker, less likely to trust her. It probably had something to do with the fact that she broke his nose, or that fact that she didn't tell him the truth right off. Whenever she was around, he would barely acknowledge her presence; he would only do it when necessary. Needless to say, he moaned like a whipped puppy when she held out her hand for the keys to her car. Ziva simply nodded, returned the keys to her motorcycle, and left her to her own devices. Training with the team resumed. Jack was rusty from her time in Los Angeles: there was not a lot of time for kickboxing practice in between stitching up her temporary team constantly and going out on missions at the request of Hetty. The Israeli assassin had applied for her American citizenship while Jack was in Los Angeles; in less than a week, Ziva would become a naturalized American citizen, having passed the interviews and exams with flying colors. This would mean that she could apply to become an NCIS agent and not just a liaison officer with Mossad. Tim was in the middle of writing another book, but he never previewed it to her or the rest of the team. He said, after the last book ended up becoming a string of murders by a fanatical (not to mention psychotic) fan, he had been writing it on the computer at home, storing it in his safe out of reach of everyone. He said that it would be ready to come out in a week or so, according to his publisher.

Jack felt out of the loop, lost at sea. Without a doubt she continued to perform her job admirably, doing everything to the best of her abilities, but it wasn't the same. Not even hunting was the same. Bobby was busy helping Dean and Sam with something, and he never needed her help. Albeit, she knew more than him about the Apocalypse, but they hadn't talked in a long time. She was a stranger wearing her own skin, and nothing fit anymore. At night, she would roam the streets, find demons and monsters, and slay them like normal, but her heart was no longer in it.

Because her heart was no longer in it, she began to miss things. For a career Marine, this was unacceptable. For a lifetime hunter, it was life or death. For prey... well, it was a perfect opportunity. That was how, when she was walking back to her house on base from a late shift, she was taken by surprise when two bullets ripped through her shoulder and knee. That was how, when she was by herself, she was captured by Lilith's cronies.

* * *

Dean knew that something was wrong, even in South Dakota. The seals were rapidly being broken. Lilith was winning, but the final few seals were yet to be broken. He had found out that Sammy was using his demon blood-augmented powers long ago, before they went to Los Angeles; instead of flipping out and cursing at him, he and Bobby sealed Sam in his panic room and forced Sam to detox. They watched over him as he screamed, as he begged, as he hallucinated. Cas tried to stop them, but Dean had had enough. He remembered what Pastor Jim and his dad said: the angels weren't to be trusted. They were going to stop this Apocalypse, but they were going to be human about it.

Something was wrong: Jack hadn't called to tell him that she was back in Washington. She would have left him a message saying that she was safe and not to worry, but she hadn't. It was like she was a ghost. So he decided to pop a visit on her, a surprise. Sam and Bobby agreed, and they piled into the Impala. I mean, if the world was going to hell in a hand-basket, better to do it around the ones that you love, right?

As he drove through the gates of Quantico, that pit in his stomach only got worse when he saw the NCIS van roll up in front of them and race down the street. He prayed that nothing was wrong, but then, why would NCIS be there if everything was alright? When he made to park in front of Jack's house, his heart dropped out of his chest: the NCIS van was stopping there as well.

Crime tape marked out her driveway; there was blood splattered on the garage door, drag marks on the cement. The old man- Gibbs, Jack had called him- was crouching next to the blood, doing something with it. He hopped out of his car and made to rush through the tape and get some answers, but the two other agents there stopped him from contaminating the crime scene. None of them recognized him; well, good. Not good. What the hell was going on? That was what he asked the agent holding him back.

"You family?" Dean shoved the agent aside and stopped at the message written plainly there. 'She's ours, Dean. Come and get her, if you can.' He didn't need to read who signed it. There was only one creature that would do this: Lilith.

"Where's Jack?" Sam and Bobby were by him now, demanding answers. The senior agent stood up and glared at the men in front of him.

"Winchester, right?" Dean nodded. "We were hoping that you would know. DiNozzo, David, let them go." Gibbs looked at the three men, Jack's only remaining family, and sighed.

This was going to be a long day.

* * *

It was the sluicing of icy water against her back that woke her from her stupor. Jack's hands were tied behind her; her feet, knees, and elbows were tied together as well. She had no weapons on her, not even a salt shaker. She cursed herself for being stupid, but she had a feeling that there would be no coming back from this one. Her left shoulder and left knee were still bleeding, but sluggishly. That, at least, was a good sign. She looked around and saw demons standing all around her. They were just standing; what the hell were they waiting for? She got her answer soon enough, as they parted like the Red Sea to reveal two meatsuits: a middle aged man, and a young child.

"You've been a bad girl, Jacky." The young child knelt next to her and placed a hand on her knee wound, pressing hard against it. The pain spiked through her, but she bit her tongue before saying a word to the demon in front of her. She knew who this was, at least according to the alarm bells ringing in her gut. Gibbs would be proud of her. That didn't make this any less frightening. "I mean, Dean? You made my boy stop working as hard to stop me. He's all focused on you. But now, I like that." The damn demon was sticking a finger in the bullet tract. Jack let out a stifled groan, before the older meatsuit slapped her across the face. "I mean, this way, I can live now. You know the signs, don't you?" She removed the finger from the wound and Jack panted for a moment.

"Jacklyn Singer, Master Sergeant, USMC, No. 173-64-9852." She slipped right into her SERE training. Nothing was to be revealed. The only information that she was to supply her captors was her name, rank, and serial number. The Lilith girl slapped her face, but she kept repeating it every time they talked to her.

"Oh well, I was hoping that she wouldn't break so quick." She looked up adoringly at the older demon, a wicked smile on her face. "Alastair, can you fix her for me?"

"Sure thing, kiddo." Alastair rubbed Lilith's head and motioned to a couple of demons. They picked her up and led her somewhere. At this point, Jack knew only one thing: she would die before cooperating with these scum. Even as they tied her to the table, stripping off her shirt and bruising her ribs, she just kept repeating that line.

* * *

Dean's phone rang; that was what stopped all of the running and chatter in the NCIS bullpen. With shaky hands, he opened it and placed it to his ear. Blood-curdling screams filled the air as he ripped it away. The whole team, Sam, and Bobby stopped in their harried motions and listened to the screams as they rang through the air. Gibbs placed it on speaker phone, and they only grew louder. Abruptly, they stopped. A little girl's voice rang out. "Hi, Dean! Do you remember me?"

"You little bitch!" Dean was about ready to destroy the phone, but McGee stopped him with Sam's help.

"You do remember me!" There was the sound of clapping hands. "Then do you remember Alastair?" Dean's face went white at the sound of that name. "I'm going to take your silence as another 'yes'. Well then, you know what it's doing to your beloved Jacky." Another scream ripped through the air, and then they grew muffled. "Dean, you still there?" The little girl's voice sounded impatient.

"Yeah, I'm still here." He was whiter than a ghost, but he was still there. Bobby had crashed to the ground when he heard the screams, his hands covering his mouth to keep him from speaking.

"Then you're ready to play the game! You have all the time in the world to find Jacky, or as long as she lasts, at least. If you find her, then you can have her. But if you don't, I get to have fun with her. Here's your clue: I'm not on consecrated soil, but the dead people here are simply amazing to play with. In this holy state, Jacky will wait, or least until she dies. Hoo-rah!" The phone turned off, the call over.

The bullpen was completely void of words for what felt like minutes, and not the seconds that it truly was. Dean stared at the phone on the desk, still hearing the screams in his ears. Sam was standing and restraining Bobby in place, but the three of them all wanted to rush out of there and find their missing companion. Gibbs sipped at his coffee, trying to hide the worry that struck him deep in the core as he heard the screams. Ziva was writing things down on a notepad, sorting out what they needed to know. McGee and Tony both were just dumbstruck at the sounds of their friend. What the hell were they doing to her?

It took what felt like a century for Dean to reach over to the phone on Gibbs' desk and shut it closed. That was when the action began. Sam had to almost literally sit on Bobby to keep him from doing something stupid. Tony and Ziva began taking the clue apart to try and decipher it. McGee was running a GPS fix on the phone, to try to get a location from it. Gibbs and Dean looked at each other before both whistling loud enough to break eardrums.

"Hey!" Gibbs looked at his team. "Knock it off! This will not get Jack back!" He glared around at his team before turning to glare at Dean. "Who was she and how do you know her?"

Dean looked at him; he had nothing to gain by lying to the man, and Jack to lose if he did. "Her name is Lililth. She's a demon, the cream of the crop. She's the one behind it all. I was in hell for four months, what felt like forty years, because I made a deal to save Sam's life; she's the one that collects the souls of the deal-makers. That was the price. And now she's got Jack."

"Who's this Alastair guy?" Dean almost laughed when Tony asked that.

"Alastair is her chief torturer. He's been doing it all of his existance. He's another demon." Dean looked forward and made this a report. "He will break her, eventually. It's only a matter of time and what he uses to torture her with." His voice went monotone; it had to, because if he broke over this, then he would never make it back. He had to get into a zone and work through it. Just like... back in Hell.

Tony turned around and stared at him with a curious look. "How do you know that?" That was exactly the question that Dean didn't want to answer. Luckily, Gibbs saved him from having to. "That's not important right now, DiNozzo. What was the clue, Ziva?"

"I'm not on consecrated soil, but the dead people here are simply amazing to play with. In this holy state, Jacky will wait, or least until she dies. Hoo-rah!" She read it right off her notepad. "But what does it mean?" Her brows furrowed as she re-read the clue quietly.

"She's in a mausoleum." That came from Bobby; as Sam slowly released him to stand but still keeping an eye on him in case he decided to rabbit. Everyone looked at him, asking nonverbally for an explanation for that sudden deduction. "That bit 'bout consecrated soil? She's not on holy ground, but she's at a place where the dead are buried." He stood up and rubbed his knuckles, a nervous tic of his. "She's most likely performing underground, but demons hate getting dirty, unless it's blood. It has to be a mausoleum."

Tony nodded his head. "Something military. That 'hoo-rah'? That's a dead ringer."

Gibbs began to go behind his computer. "She's in Arlington Cemetery, Maryland." That was the last part of the clue. Holy state? What other state had any reference to anything holy in its name, plus had a military graveyard with mausoleums? "McGee, how's that fix coming?"

"Almost got it, boss." He was typing madly. "Got it!" He pulled it up on the plasma. Everyone stared at it, but only Gibbs knew where she was exactly.

"She's in the Memorial Amphitheater."

* * *

Pain... that was her world. Undescribable amounts of pain racked her system. She could barely feel anything anymore, only the pain. There was the feel of the rack at first: the leather restraints, the wood underneath her torso, the muzzle sometimes, but not always, used; those were the constants. Then there were the quick feel of the blades, the flame, the claws. But the pain was a constant amidst the variables.

"Now, this is more fun, isn't it, Jacky girl?" The muzzle was off as he was cleaning his tools, his back towards her. He was wearing one of those butcher's aprons to protect his suit, and it was all splattered in blood, her blood. "Please, speak up. I enjoy it when people critique my work."

She had to swallow a couple of times to wet her mouth enough to speak. "Go... to... hell." Her eyes rolled back a bit as another wave hit her as he reached over and broke one of her remaining fingers.

"Now, now, Jacky." He had the audacity to shake his finger at her like she was a rebellious schoolgirl. "There's no need for attitude. After all, it's good to be civil."

She took a shallow breath; the wounds near her lungs had pierced her diaphragm and made breathing a labour. Some of her other wounds included: broken tibiae and fibulae; amputated toes; burns on the bottom of her feet and slices through her Achilles tendons; broken ankles (in several places); severed quadriceps; broken ribs, shallow lacerations of her abdominal muscles; puncture wounds of the diaphragm; lacerations on her torso; biceps and triceps sliced through; fingertips grated off and palms severely burned; four of ten fingers broken; broken wrists... The list went on and on. Nothing had happened to her face, yet.

It had been fourteen hours since her capture. Alastair always kept a clock nearby. He never liked to do more that an hour of torture without a small break in between. This was one of those breaks: a moment for him to clean his tools, and a long time for her to feel the pain. Sadistic as it was, Jack had to admire his style. He was quite similar to the SERE instructor in that method, at least. That was when it clicked. "You were the one." He looked at her for a moment, a polite confused look on his face for the sake of appearances. "You were possessing the SERE instructor when I was undergoing my training, weren't you?"

He laughed; it was a nice laugh, almost lilting. "Ah, you're a quick one, aren't you my little Marine?" He pinched her cheek. "Yeah, that was fun. I wanted to warm you up before I got you on my table." He let her go and picked up another blade. "But, where does the time go? It's time to get back to work."

* * *

The NCIS van rolled into the graveyard, breaking every single traffic law between here and Washington, but with the sirens blaring, no one thought to question the federal agents or the Impala that had a siren affixed to its top that roared behind them. As they pulled up to the Memorial Amphitheater, the location of the graves of the Unknown Soldiers among many other things, Dean, Sam, and Bobby ripped out of the Impala and opened up the trunk.

Without a word, they passed out the salt-loaded buckshot and the holy water grenades to the agents. Sam picked up his demon-killing blade, the one that the bitch Ruby had given to him as a gift when he had mastered his powers (he thanked Dean every day for purging him of that; it wasn't right, even if it was one of the few ways to kill Lilith and her cronies). Bobby passed out the common exorcism to the agents as well before loading up on weapons. Everyone double-checked to make sure that their anti-possession amulets were in place.

Gibbs took point, leading the two teams into the Amphitheater and down into the mausoleums where the Unknown Soldiers were buried. They were the forgotten ones, the ones with no names that had fought in every major war since the First World War. In a way, Jack was one of them. Despite her communicating with them while she was in Los Angeles, they had forgotten about her. When she had returned, she was barely acknowledged as she returned to the DC monotony. It was only now, when she was in the fight for her life and could only depend on them, did they come together and remember her as the missing member of Team Gibbs. After all, she was the one that had introduced the supernatural to them in the first place; she had bared her soul to them, and now they were in a race to save it before it was too late..

They were checking every way when they heard the screams rip through the air. Dean stopped them all and motioned for them to stop. He turned to them all as they headed into a back room in the hall. "Okay, here's the deal." He pointed to McGee and Ziva. "You guys have the exorcism. This will cast the demons out of their bodies and back to Hell. Read it once over, in your head. Do not screw it up." Looking to Tony and Gibbs, "you guys have the holy water grenades. Fire them at the demons before those two read the exorcism. That will freak the demons out and make Lilith aware that we're here."

He turned to Sam and Bobby. "Now, we don't want to face demons and Alastair and Lilith at the same time, but Alastair and Lilith are doable. Now, that knife won't kill them, Sammy. We just want Jack. If we have to, we kill the vessels and fight them another day."

"Dean, what about..." Sam pointed to his head.

"No, Sam." Bobby resisted slapping him on the back of the head. That detox had nearly killed him, listening to the screams. What was with Winchesters and trying to kill him? But Dean had other plans.

"If we need to, go ahead, Sam." Dean passed him a flask, his old flask of demon blood. Bobby glared at the two of them as Sam took it and tucked it in his jacket. "Just know that we'll purge you again after." Sam nodded to that.

Dean took one last look around and gave everyone the go-ahead. Once again, Gibbs and Tony took point. They came to the room where the screaming was the loudest, and tossed the grenades in. Ziva and McGee recited the exorcism flawlessly, hearing the sounds of demons screaming as they forcibly vacated their meatsuits. The seven of them entered the room and had themselves a Texas-style faceoff.

"Well, hi Dean." A little girl with blonde ringlets and a Mary Jane outfit stepped forward amidst the fallen corpses. "Well, it took you shorter time than I expected to solve my riddle. Remind me never to underestimate you again." Unseen by her, Sam took a quick chug of the demon blood and felt his eyes go black momentarily before stepping next to his brother. "Sammy, don't you look good, huh?" The kid's smile was creepy as the white eyes glared out at the federal agents. "And who are these guys?" The kid clapped her hands. "Oh, did you bring me new toys to play with?"

"In your dreams, bitch!" Sam stepped forward a single pace, keeping his powers in check. Just that little jolt of blood was enough to get him back at full strength. The purge was going to be a bitch, but if it saved Jack... It was worth it. "Bring him out. We want to talk to him."

"Oh, Alastair?" She looked over her shoulder just in time to hear a massive scream ripped through the air followed by whimpering. It tore at Bobby's heart to hear that from his baby girl, but he had to remain focused. Jack wouldn't expect anything less from any of them. "He's a little busy, don't you agree?"

"Fine, then." Ziva and McGee started up the exorcism again. Everyone with free hands and holy salt ammunition fired on the little girl. Sam stepped forward and accessed his powers and killed that demon bitch cold. Her screams weren't much louder than Jack's, but they were of a higher pitch, a child's pitch. It was the first time that the NCIS team had seen a demon killed, but the hunters in the group were used to it. But still, seeing Sam with black eyes was unnaturally eerie. Bobby swore to himself. He had already witnessed Sam living through one purge; did he have the strength (or the bone-headed stubborness) to go through another one?

With a surge of will, it was Gibbs that burst through the closed door and shot the demon vessel with the holy salt rounds that Dean had given him. But it was the sight of Jack that made him, a seasoned Marine sniper that had lived through Desert Storm, turn away and vomit. Dean, Sam, and Bobby stepped past him and the dumbstruck team and saw what made Gibbs react so horribly.

Jack looked unconscious as she was strapped to the rack that Dean was so intimately familiar with, but she was almost dead. She was held in place by the leather restraints across her chest, her hips, her ankles, and her outstretched wrists. Sam saw the broken bones protruding out of the skin of her legs and arms, the surgically severed muscles. Dean saw the endless burn marks on her feet and hands, the claw marks of the whip that Alastair loved to employ. Bobby only saw her face: her beautiful face was covered in blood. There were cuts on her cheeks and jawbone, black eyes and fat lips; one of her ears was torn off completely. She coughed weakly for a moment, blood coming out of the corner of her mouth.

For a moment, no one did anything. It was a testament to the depth of her strength, and the lessons beat into her through training, that she was still breathing. Gibbs radioed it in, his radio reception instant background noise to the rest of the frozen team. It was Bobby that walked forward towards his daughter, tears glistening from his weary eyes, as he walked up to her and gently, ever so gently, placed a hand on her cheek. "Jacky?"

Her whole body seized for a moment, her breath drawing in quickly through her mouth. They all heard the groans as she slowly opened her blackened eyes and looked around as who had touched her. "No, no, Alastair. No more. Not gonna tell you anything. Jacklyn Singer, Master Sergeant, USMC, No. 173-64-9852." Gibbs walked up beside her, and did the only thing that he could do without disturbing her too much. He gently slapped the top of her head. The three hunters present all tried to rush him at that, but when her eyes cleared for a moment and she looked back at Gibbs, they knew that there was still a slim bit of hope.

Bobby rushed next to her and began to undo the straps that held her to the rack. Tears were coming down his face like a torrential downpour as she tried to reach up and touch his face but couldn't. So he did that to her: ran his hand down her face. "Daddy?" Bobby's heart wrenched again: she hadn't called him that since she was a little child. Dean walked around to her other side. All of them could hear the sirens above of the ambulance. Tony was running to meet the EMTs to guide them down. But Dean only saw her, what the demons had done to his girl. As he looked her over, a small seed of despair crept into him. She might not make it out of this, not alive.

The paramedics burst into the room and got Jack on the gurney as carefully as they could, but they could not stabilize all of her injuries. One of them passed a look at Bobby as they wheeled her mutilated self out of here, but that look revealed nothing. Dean didn't care: he needed to talk to someone. Point in fact: he wanted to ream Cas a new one for this. There was no way that he was working for them now. Besides, the Apocalypse was averted; there was no more point to it. With Lilith dead, there was no way for the Devil to get free of his cage. It was all over.

* * *

It was a blur of motion as Dean, Sam, Bobby, Gibbs, Tony, Ziva, and McGee waited in the waiting room of Bethseda's emergency room. En route as they raced to the hospital (it wasn't the nearest, but it was the closest with the equipment needed to take care of her), Jack had coded twice according to the paramedics. She had lost a lot of blood, but she was still clinging to something.

Gibbs had called Abby and Ducky, to let them know of the situation. Both of them had rushed to the hospital as quickly as they could. Abby was in tears, signing incoherently as her voice failed her. McGee had her under control for the moment as they waited for any word. Ducky, still dressed in his scrubs, paced the floor.

Finally, Capt. Johnson stepped out of the code room, blood all over his scrubs. Behind him, the gurney carrying their comrade headed for the elevator. Dean didn't see her among all of the equipment; was she even still alive? The captain approached them, a grave look on his face as he looked at the hunters and naval cops. "I will not beat around the bush, people. Master Sergeant Singer is one of the toughest Marines ever under my command, but she's on the cusp. We had to transfuse her with six units of blood, after cracking her chest and trying to fix the wounds to her abdominal muscles. She's on a ventilator to help her breathe. Right now, she's on her way to Surgery to try to fix whatever damage they can." He ran his massive hand over his head. "But I have to say this: there is a ninety percent chance that she will not make it off the operating table alive." With that, he turned and followed the path that her gurney had taken.

Not a one person spoke a word as they digested the words that the captain had spoken. Not a one person moved as Bobby collapsed to his knees and began weeping anew. Everyone's thoughts were on the crazy Master Sergeant, a team medic, a hunter and go-to-person, but most of all their friend, as she fought for her life.


	19. Chapter 19

It was the biggest scene of organized chaos that Bethseda Naval Hospital had seen in a long time. In their biggest operating room, surgeons came and left in procedural shifts as they worked on Master Sergeant Jacklyn Singer. She had come in with torture injuries, but the investigators that had come in with her had given no story bout how she had gotten those injuries. But at this moment, none of the doctors cared about that. Their goal was to save the woman lying on the operating table.

Captain Johnson shook his head as he removed her spleen. Five other surgeons had shifted in and out as they worked on all of the breaks; more iron rods and screws went into her than any other procedure ever done before. There wasn't anything to be done for her toes, but she could learn to live without them. Her ribs were now screwed into place, her diaphragm stitched up. They were almost done, but this was only a part of the battle. She had coded on them twice as she was transported here, twice in the emergency room, and once again here in the OR. She was holding on to something, but it was unclear as to what it was. "Come on, Jack. Fight this, dammit!" He swore under his breath as he helped her back to life.

All the while, the NCIS team and the hunters were waiting outside. Bobby was comatose after his breakdown; not even the cup of coffee in his hands was recognized as being there. Dean and Sam couldn't stop moving and pacing. Abby was weeping on Ducky's shoulder. Tony was waiting, Ziva's hand in his, as they kept looking up at the clock. McGee looked worried as he kept writing things down on a notepad; case notes, maybe? Gibbs... Gibbs looked out the window, not wanting to think about what he had seen, not wanting to think about what Jack had gone through. None of them wanted to voice what was on their minds: was Jack going to make it out of this?

* * *

_It was strange... she looked around at where she was and saw that she was in Bethesda. What was stranger was that she was whole: none of the injuries that Alastair had given her were on her. To compound it, no one acknowledged her. Even as she shouted in the ears of the people passing her by, not a one saw that she was here. "What's going on? Why won't you help me?" Her hand was going through objects and people alike. Was she a ghost? What the hell was going on?_

_"Hello, Jacklyn." She turned around so fast that she should have given herself whiplash. Looking down the hallway, she saw a woman in a white dress walking towards her. As she got closer, she noted the straight brown-black hair, the clear green eyes, and the bare feet. That lady definitely was not a patient in the hospital. "Don't be afraid. My name is Tessa."_

_"Where am I? Who are you?" She hated to admit it, but she was scared shitless about what was happening to her._

_The lady that called herself 'Tessa' stopped before her. "Your instincts are right, Jacklyn. Listen to what they are telling you."_

_Jack stopped for a moment, running her hands through her hair. Listen to her instincts? Almost at once, the puzzle pieces fell into place. She looked at Tessa, and she nodded. "I'm in the place between life and death. I'm not ready to move on. And you're a reaper, come to take my soul." Tessa nodded, confirming all that she had said. "What happened to me?"_

_Without words, Tessa simply guided her through the crowded hallways to the operating room. Jack saw for herself just how bad she was: she knew that she was going to be unable to live like this, even if she managed to make it through the surgeries. But if a reaper was here, then that meant that she wasn't going to pull through it. Jack turned back to Tessa, tears falling down her spirit face as she made to leave. She ran until she found an empty patient bed just to sit on to catch her breath. Tessa came and sat down next to her as she tried not to hyperventilate._

_Jack looked at the reaper, pleading in her eyes. "I guess that you've heard all of the begging, right? That I'm not ready to go? That I still have so much to do? That I can't put my family and friends through that?" Tessa nodded. Jack tried to come to terms with this, but she was having a hard time of doing that. _

_"Jacky." She looked over and saw Caleb and Pastor Jim standing in the doorway. They had come to her again and sat close to her. "It's okay. What you would live as... no one should live like that._

_"But isn't this suicide?" All three of them shook their heads, but Pastor Jim gave the answer that she needed to hear. "This is not suicide, Jacklyn Singer. This is accepting that everyone has to die at their time. This is your time."_

_Jack looked at them all, the next words out of her mouth sounding like a scared child. "Will it hurt?"_

_Pastor Jim took her hand as Caleb wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "No. It's more of a relief. Everything is finished. You don't have to hunt anymore; you don't have to worry."_

_She looked at Tessa, but all that Tessa would say was, "It's your choice, Jacklyn. You can move on, or you can stay here as a ghost forever. What do you choose?"_

_

* * *

_

It had been eight hours since they had rescued Jack from the Memorial Amphitheater. Vance had sent another team to process the crime scene; for once, he had left Gibbs and his team alone to wait in the hospital. But it had been eight long and agonizing hours... four hundred and eighty minutes... twenty eight thousand, eight hundred seconds... There was no news, until now.

The doctor from before, Captain Johnson, came out; the sheer amount of blood on his scrubs was morbid, knowing that all of it was from Jack. Dean very nearly rushed him, but Sam held him back, but just barely. He came forward and stopped before the group. There was a look on his face that spelled out nothing but doom. "I'm so sorry, but we tried everything. She coded for a sixth time, and we were not able to bring her back. We tried everything." Everyone saw the tears coming down his face; they had all forgotten that this man was Jack's commanding officer and the man that watched her back for six years overseas. "But she died."

No one rushed him as he wiped a hand across his face and got rid of the tears. Not a one person moved. Everyone was in shock. A nurse came out and took over for the captain, standing before them with a sad look on her face but a steel in her spine that came only from experience. "We're just cleaning her up now, but you guys can come see her, and say goodbye."

Dean helped Bobby to his feet as he and Sam helped Jack's father walk into the OR. Gibbs stopped his team from following them; this was their time right now. Their time would come later. Right now, he took over the paperwork for the case. It was time to fill out a time and cause of death.

* * *

Dean walked past the steels doors of the OR entrance, past the desk where a unit clerk was typing away with a sombre expression on his face. It was like a funeral march as they walked past the orderlies as they showed them the way to the theatre, and past the nurses that were huddled away and talking in muted tones. It took all of his strength to open the glass doors and walk into the room where Jack- Jack's body- was resting.

The nurse was right: they had cleaned her up good. Most of the blood had been mopped away, the garbage placed in biohazard bags and taken away. The machines were silent. There were trays of bloodied instruments, but they had been pushed against the wall and covered as to not frighten the hunters. He helped Bobby walk to the table, and saw his girlfriend laying there. They had covered her body up in a sheet up to her collar bones. He could still see the injuries to her face, but her muscles were so relaxed. It wasn't like her arm was hanging limp from the table, but it was like she was still for the first time in a long eyes, her beautiful hazel-brown eyes, were closed for good. It looked almost like she was sleeping, but there was no breathing movements from her torso.

Bobby let go of the boys' arm and placed a shaking hand on her cheek, feeling her cold skin. There was no life left; there was none of the spunk and the jazz that made her his daughter. This was just a shell, but she couldn't be gone, not yet. His shaky hand made its way down to her throat; he wanted to make sure. It hadn't truly sunk in yet. His baby girl couldn't be dead, not yet, not like this. When there was no response, no gentle pulse against his fingertips, he keened as his knees gave out from under him and he cursed every living thing in sight. This was not the stalwart hunter-scholar-father that had helped out the brothers after John died. This was not their drinking buddy and friend that had called them 'idjits' for every gray hair on his head. This was a father that had lost his only child, the only thing he had left that was part of him. It was unnatural for a child to die before their parents, even in this life where it was almost guaranteed that you would die before long. What was left for Bobby now?

Sam remained out of the way, letting the tears fall silently down his cheeks. The images flashed in his mind in no set order of time or reason: the time when he had crashed her house party and demanded answers... that time when Jack helped them out of that squeeze in Los Angeles... when she was there with him when Dean was killed... the smile on her face when she helped them solve their problems... the way her face would soften when she would look at his brother's promise ring... that first time when they were in her house and she made pancakes for them. That would never happen again.

Dean just stood there. It was sinking in that Jack was gone, but he was empty. There were no more tears left to be shed; he was dry. Why couldn't he feel anything? He helped Bobby up to his feet, mindless of Bobby's fighting him to bring him back to his baby girl, and they left the macabre room. Bobby stopped his fighting soon after, but the tears never stopped falling.

Jack was gone... and she wasn't coming back this time.

* * *

The church was filled to the brim on the day of Jack's memorial service. The remaining members of her company were there with their families, remembering the then-gunnery sergeant that tried her best to make sure that they got to come home to their families. Capt. Johnson was there, his wife holding his gloved hand as he refused to break down in front of all gathered. Cpl. Damon Werth was standing as honor guard next to her remains, the epitome of a stoic Marine. The friends that she had made during SERE training were sprinkled in the crowd, all in their dress uniforms: the Deltas, the Rangers, and the SEALs that made sure that she came back in one piece, and she them. NCIS was represented by Gibbs, Tony, McGee, Abby, Ziva, Vance, Callen, Hetty, Sam Hanna, Kensi, Nate, and Eric. Dean, Sam, Bobby, Missouri, and Rufus were seated in the front row as they listened to the stories shared.

Amelia helped Dean and Bobby to arrange the funeral plans; in fact, she did it all as the boys were way out of their league. They had talked to the funeral home to make sure that she was cremated; Dean made personally sure that she was burned with plenty of salt. In the front of the church, there was a simple bronze urn filled with her ashes. Behind the urn, amidst the massive poppy wreaths, were blown-up pictures of her in various stages of her life: there was her formal portrait when she graduated Parris Island a full-blood Corporal; there were two candids of her with her NCIS teams; there was one of her with Dean, Bobby, and Sam. In front of the vase, rested her pentacle necklace, her dog-tags, her ring, and her folded up dress uniform displaying her ribbons.

The day before the funeral was to take place, Gibbs informed Dean and Sam of something that would have made them celebrate if it were not for the sombre occasion. The paperwork had come through. Jack's promotion had been pushed through posthumously in a record time. She was going to be buried as Master Gunnery Sergeant Jacklyn Singer, the highest rank that was possible for her to attain. In addition, she was posthumously granted several medals: The Navy Cross, for her selfless service overseas; the Navy Distinguished Service Medal, for her service with NCIS; and the Good Conduct Medal.

Dean, dressed in the new suit that he had gotten especially for this occasion, stood up and walked the few steps to the lecturn. He had listened to the stories of some of her platoon members from Iraq as she saved their collective asses more times than they could count. He had sat quietly as Callen relayed a description of her from when she was stationed in Los Angeles, when she would joke and patch him and Sam up, even if she was injured herself. He had begun to fidget when Gibbs stood up and told everyone about the crazy Marine that watched out for her team and for her family, who was a stalwart friend but also a caring person that put everyone else before herself. Now, it was his turn.

He took a deep breath as he took out the papers and began to read what he felt was important about his friend and lover. "We all know that Jack Singer, Gunny, Doc, Wolf, whatever you knew her as, was a caring person, a laugh and a joy to hang out with, and a person to have at your back in a fight. She was the one in the background, always making sure that we were all right to continue doing our jobs, even at her own expense. But she was so much more then that. Jack Singer, my Jacky, loved to drive fast. She hated waiting around as she healed or as she worked through her own pain, because it took time away from her job and from us. If you took one look inside of her life, past all of the guards and defenses that she kept up in order to do her job, it would tell us about someone that was devoted to everything she did. When she agreed to wear my ring, that was the happiest day of my life. Every time I saw her was like an affirmation about why I was still here.

"Most of us have dangerous jobs; we don't know if we'll come home or not, whether or not if we'll see tomorrow, whether or not our friends will be the ones to tell our family that we won't be coming back. Jack would always try her damnedest to make sure that we would come home, so that we could continue living. She would probably call us all 'idjits' for mourning her like this. She would probably prefer a drink at a bar and a wake, and not all these long faces. But she would understand." He choked back the tears that he had tried so hard to contain. Sam made to get up, in case Dean needed him for moral support, but Dean motioned for him to sit. "Jacklyn Singer was loyal to us, as a friend, as a worker, as a Marine, and as a medic. She was a bright light on a dark day, even on her own dark days." At that moment, a picture on the slide show behind him showed the memorial tattoo that she had gotten for all the hunters that trained her. "She would tell us to mourn for her today, pick up the pieces tomorrow, and think about her from time to time.

"I don't know what else to say. But, damn, I'm going to miss her." By now the tears were coming down his face as he looked up at the crowd and walked down, tripping only once and so small that very few people noticed. The priest finished the mass, and Cpl. Damon Werth stood next to the urn. Dean, Gibbs, Callen, Sam, Bobby, and Capt. Johnson stood up with him and helped carry out the urn and the trappings around the memorial out to the car that would take her back to Arlington.

* * *

Gibbs stood in the crowd as Dean took the ashes and placed them in the ground underneath the headstone that read: "Master Gunnery Sergeant Jacklyn Singer: _Carpe Diem, Quam Minimum Credula Postero_. Born April 21, 1974. Died July 19, 2009." Every person took a small hand of dirt and placed it over the jar, salt water mixing in the consecrated earth. Abby had taken a bouquet of her signature black roses and placed them against her tombstone. Capt. Johnson gave the order for the honor guard to perform the twenty-one gun salute. Everything was all official, all pompous. Jack would have laughed at it all, but she would have appreciated it.

He was empty as he walked away and found the place where his Shannon and Kelly laid in the ground. They were waiting for him, but his time wasn't now. It wasn't her time either, but he couldn't bring her back. All that was left to do was to go back to work. He didn't know that she had a will or not, but he doubted that he would be in it.

She was gone. After all that she had gone through, she was gone. Man, he was gonna miss her.

* * *

It was five days after Jack's funeral, but they were all together again. A stodgy-looking lawyer was in front of them all as the team, Dean, Sam, Bobby, Missouri, Abby, and Ducky were gathered once more. Jack's will and final testament was needing to be read.

With a slight clearing of the throat, the balding little man began. _"I, Jacklyn Singer, being of sound mind and body, do declare this to be my last will and testament. This supersedes all other documents. This is my final wish. I hope that I died in combat, or surrounded by you guys. Now that the official stuff is out of the way, let's get down to it._

_"Guys, I know that you are hurting. Gibbs, you guys might think that you're guilty for forgetting me. Truthfully, you guys made me remember what I was. Dean, Sam, take care of Dad for me. Help him remember that others are going to need his help. I'll always be watching over you guys._

_"To Robert Singer, I leave all of my books and a quarter of my estate, coming to $50,000. Daddy, I'll always be your little girl, and I want you to keep fighting, okay? Don't stop because of me. It's going to be hard, but I'm with Mom now. Remember that I always loved you._

_"To Missouri Mosley, I leave you all my protection pieces around the house, and my books as well, to share with Dad. Please help him out. You were like the mom that I never had, and I love you for it._

_"To Dean and Samuel Winchester, I leave all of the equipment in the basement panic room, all of my journals, as well as a quarter of my estate. Guys, watch out for each other. Cas is a dick, but he was right. With the Apocalypse and all, keep fighting._

_"To Abigail Scuito, I leave my house. I know that you always liked it, and so it's yours. The paperwork's being all done, and should be ready. Never forget, Abby, to love life like you always do. Don't forget me, but don't mourn me. I'm all right now._

_"To Dr. Donald Mallard, I leave my original copy of "Harrison's Internal Medicine", as well as all of my medical equipment. Ducky, you were an awesome friend. Never forget your stories, and maybe tell mine one of these days._

_"To Timothy McGee, I give you permission to use my name and life in one of your books. Never forget, Tim, that you are just as good an agent as Tony. Don't let push you around too much._

_"To Ziva David and Antony DiNozzo, I leave my motorcycle and Camaro. You guys are perfect for each other, and don't let my death stop that._

_"To L. Jethro Gibbs, I leave my wood-working tools in the garage. I know that you have your own, but keep them or sell them. I leave that to you, Boss._

_"As for the rest of my estate, I wish that one half goes to the Semper Fi Fund, and the other half goes to Parris Island Marine Corps Training Depot._

_"As a parting statement, guys, remember that today is just one day, and that tomorrow is a new day with new opportunities. Never take those opportunities to help others for granted. That is the best thing that you guys can do if you want to remember me. Never stop helping those that need help. This is Jack Singer, signing out. Semper Fi, and Good Luck."_

The room was quiet. Everyone was tired of crying now. No one noticed the four ghosts in the corner. Jack looked to Caleb, Pastor Jim, and John with a sad smile on her face. She didn't want to leave. Three more joined their little group, no words spoken among them. Gibbs' Shannon placed a hand on her shoulder, while Kelly grabbed her hand. Her mom placed a hand on her other shoulder as all seven of them slowly disappeared.

Dean turned and faced the now-empty corner. He looked to Sam, who cracked a small smile and watched as Bobby and Missouri left together. Gibbs and the team headed back to work, knowing that there was still work to be done. After all, it was what Jack would have wanted.

* * *

**AN: And that, loyal readers, is the end of 'Gunnery Sergeant Jacklyn Singer'. It was awesome being on this crazy journey, but I must ask one last time for you guys to review. I mean, you guys came this far. I write this in remembrance of all the soldiers overseas: may we never forget what they do, and what they give.**


End file.
